The hard ones
How to answer what are your salary expectations when you don't know what the job pays.
This gives you a way to handle the money question the first time it comes up, before you know the range, without lowballing yourself or sounding cagey. You get the research to do beforehand, the words to use, and what to say when they push back.
Why they ask it
Most of the time it's not a test. It's a screening step. The recruiter has a budget for the role, and they want to know early whether you're inside it or outside it, so nobody spends four weeks on interviews that end in a number you'd never take. That's a reasonable thing for them to want.
There's a second thing going on too. Whoever speaks a number first sets the frame for everything after it. If you say a number below what they were ready to pay, that becomes the ceiling. Nobody talks you up. That's why the question feels like a trap even when it isn't meant as one.
So you're doing two jobs at once: staying in the running, and not giving away money because you were caught off guard. You can do both. The answer is shorter than you think, and it's mostly research you do before the call.
What not to say
"I'm flexible." Or "whatever you think is fair." Or "that's negotiable."
This never lands a point. It reads as unprepared, not easygoing. And it doesn't even get you out of the question — they'll just ask again, and now you're answering from behind. Worse, some hiring teams hear it and start at the bottom of their range, because you told them you'd take it.
Naming your last salary as your expectation.
It chains your next job to your old one. If you were underpaid, you stay underpaid. If you were laid off from a shrinking company, you carry their budget problems into a new building. Note: in many states it's illegal for an employer to even ask your salary history. You can decline. See the framework below.
Blurting one exact number in the first thirty seconds.
You don't have enough information yet. You don't know the scope, the team size, the benefits, whether there's a bonus. A single number now is a guess you'll be held to later, and it's almost always a guess that's too low, because anxious people guess low.
Explaining what you need to cover your bills.
"My mortgage is [amount], so I need [amount]" is honest, and it still doesn't work. Your expenses aren't an argument about the value of the job, and it hands them information about how badly you need the offer. Keep the reasoning on the market and the role.
Dodging three times in a row.
One polite redirect is fine and normal. Two starts to feel slippery. By the third, the recruiter thinks you're either hiding something or going to be painful to negotiate with. When they ask a second time, answer.
How to build a strong answer
- Get a real range before the call, not a feeling.
Spend thirty minutes. Look at the job posting itself — many states now require employers to publish a pay range, so the answer may already be sitting in the ad. Check Levels.fyi, Glassdoor, LinkedIn salary data, Payscale, and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for your job title and metro area. Ask two people who do your job what a role like this pays. Write down three numbers: the number you'd be thrilled with, the number you'd say yes to without hesitating, and the number below which you'd walk. That bottom number is the one nobody hears. It's for you. - Turn the question back once, politely, and mean it.
Say some version of: "I want to make sure I'm giving you a useful number, so it would help to hear the range budgeted for the role." That's it. Then stop talking and let them answer. Recruiters often have the range and will tell you — in a lot of places they're required to if you ask. If they give it to you, you've won the exchange without naming anything. If they say they can't, you move to step three in the same breath. No sulking, no repeating yourself. - Name a range, and make the bottom of it a number you'd genuinely accept.
Give a band of about ten to fifteen percent — "[low number] to [high number]" — and tie it to something outside your own head: the market for this title in this area, your years doing the work, the scope they described. Then add one sentence that keeps the door open: "That's based on what I'm seeing for this role in [city], and I'd want to learn more about the full package before I get firm." Assume they will hear the bottom number. So the bottom number cannot be a wish. It has to be a number that makes you happy on a Tuesday morning in month seven. - Stop talking.
This is the whole skill. Say your range, say your one sentence of reasoning, and go quiet. Silence after a number feels like four hours. It's usually two seconds. People who keep talking talk themselves down — "but I'm flexible, and honestly the benefits matter more, and I know that might be high." Every one of those words costs you money. Say it, breathe, wait. - Handle the salary history question separately.
If they ask what you currently make or last made, that's a different question and you don't have to answer it. Try: "I'd rather focus on the value of this role than what I was paid at my last job — my expectation is [range]." Said warmly, that ends it almost every time. In states with salary history bans, they shouldn't be asking at all, and you're on firm ground. Don't lecture them about the law. Just redirect and move on.
Examples to adapt
These are shapes, not scripts. Say them in your own words with your own facts — anything in brackets is a detail only you know, and it has to be the true one.
First recruiter call, you have no idea what they've budgeted. Try this before you name anything.
You ask once, you don't make it weird, and you have a number ready the instant they decline. Ending with "is that in the neighborhood" gets you information back — a flinch or a "yes, that works" tells you a lot. Adapt the words to how you actually talk. Don't memorize it.
Mid-career, laid off, and worried they can smell it. You've done fifteen years and you need this to go well.
It's short, it's grounded in the market rather than in your situation, and it never mentions the layoff. Being between jobs does not obligate you to take less, and you don't have to bring it up here. The reasoning sentence does real work — it tells them what they'd be buying. Then you stop.
Early career. One internship, maybe two. You genuinely don't know what the job pays and you feel like you have no ground to stand on.
Admitting you're early doesn't weaken it. Showing you did the research is the whole point — it says you'll be someone who checks things before speaking. The range still protects you, and you've named a floor without sounding entitled. Swap in your own numbers and your own words.
What comes next
Answer this one well and the interviewer usually goes here:
- "What are you making now?" or "What was your last salary?" — you can decline and redirect to your range.
- "What's the lowest you'd accept?" — don't hand over your walk-away number. Say: "My range is [low] to [high]; where I land depends on the full package."
- "That's above what we budgeted. Is there flexibility?" — ask what their range is, then decide honestly. If the gap is small, ask what else is on the table: bonus, start date, PTO, a review at six months.
- "Why do you think you're worth that?" — have two sentences ready about what you've actually done, not how hard you work.
- "If we offered you [number] today, would you take it?" — you're allowed to say "I'd want to see the full offer in writing before I answer that."
- "Are you interviewing anywhere else?" — answer truthfully and briefly. If you're not, "nothing at this stage" is fine.
- An online application with a required salary field — put the bottom of your researched range, or the middle. If the field takes text, "negotiable based on full package" or a range. Don't put 0 or 999999; some systems screen on it.
Say it out loud before it counts.
Reading a good answer and giving one are different skills, and the gap shows up in the room. Offer asks you this question out loud, on a clock, and tells you what landed. The first one is free.
Practice this out loudThe number feels enormous right now because it's yours, but to the person on the other end it's a routine screening question — do your thirty minutes of research, pick your three numbers, and you'll be more prepared than most people who walk in that door.