How to answer “What are your salary expectations?”

Updated November 11, 2026

The salary question is the one candidates dread most and prepare least. It takes twenty minutes of preparation and one sentence said without flinching.

Prepare a range, not a number

Look at what the role pays in your city and sector: published ranges in job adverts, salary surveys, people you know in similar roles.

Set a floor below which you would say no, and a target. The range you say starts a little above your floor and ends above your target: the discussion nearly always moves down from what you say first.

Say it in one sentence

A range, where it comes from, and what you are flexible on. Then stop talking. The silence after a number is uncomfortable, and candidates fill it by lowering their own price.

If you are asked very early, you can give the range and add that you would like to understand the scope of the role first.

If they ask what you earn now

You can answer with what you are aiming for instead: 'For this role I'm aiming for…'. In some places employers are not allowed to ask about your pay history, so check the rule where you live.

Never give a false figure. It can be checked, and it is a poor start.

An answer, before and after

What are your salary expectations?

You said

Um, I don't really know, whatever is usual for this kind of role I guess. I'm flexible.

Try

For this scope, I'm aiming for between 52 and 58 thousand. I'm basing that on comparable roles in payments, and I'm open on the split between fixed and variable.

A range, where it comes from, and what you are flexible on.

Then say it out loud

Tell the app that the salary question is what worries you: your Interviewer asks it during the Interview, so that the first time you say your range aloud is not the real one.

Download on the App Store