A recruiter I used to work with told me she asks the salary question in the first ten minutes of every initial call. Not because the company won’t flex, but because she learned years ago that it filters out mismatches fast. “If someone is expecting $180K and the role tops out at $130K, neither of us should waste the next four hours,” she said. That’s the honest version of why companies ask early.
Knowing why they ask changes how you answer it.
The early-stage deflection
In a first screening call, you usually have room to redirect. Giving a number this early locks you in before you’ve seen the full compensation package, before you know how equity is structured, before you’ve talked to anyone on the team. You can say something like:
“I want to make sure I understand the full scope of the role before I anchor on a number. Could you share what range you have budgeted for this position?”
About half the time they’ll give you a range. That’s information you didn’t have before. The other half will push back and say they need your number first. At that point you’re not deflecting anymore, you’re stalling, and stalling reads badly. Move to a range.
How to give a range that doesn’t hurt you
The mistake most people make is anchoring their number to their current salary. That’s backwards. Your current salary reflects what a previous employer decided your work was worth, in a different market, possibly years ago. The relevant anchor is what this role pays at market.
Before any interview loop, look up comparable roles on Levels.fyi, LinkedIn Salary, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook. Cross-reference at least three data sources. Then give a range where your actual target is the bottom, not the middle. If you want $145K, say $145K to $165K. The company will offer somewhere in your range. They rarely offer above it.
Navigating required form fields
Some applicant tracking systems require a number to proceed. There’s no good answer here. You can enter a number at the lower end of market to stay competitive, enter your target number and accept that some employers will screen you out, or enter a round number that clearly signals “I’ll discuss this.” I’ve seen people enter $1 to skip the field. I wouldn’t do that. It reads as either uninformed or evasive to whoever reviews applications.
The honest answer is that required salary fields in applications are a forcing function, and you can’t dodge them. Enter your actual target, based on real market research, and move on.
Scripts that work at the final-round stage
By the time you’re at final rounds, deflecting is almost always the wrong move. You’ve both invested real time. They know your background. At this stage, being specific signals confidence. Something like:
“Based on my research and the scope of what we’ve discussed, I’m targeting a base in the $155K to $170K range. I’m also interested in understanding how equity and bonus are structured before locking in a specific number.”
That sentence does a few things at once. It gives a real range. It signals you’ve done research. And it opens the total compensation conversation without making it adversarial.
What to avoid saying
“I’m flexible” without a range. This sounds accommodating but it’s not. It just makes the recruiter give you their lowest number and call it fair. Flexibility should come after anchoring, not before.
“I’m currently making X” as your opening anchor. If X is below market, you’ve just capped yourself. If X is above market, you may have priced yourself out. Your current salary is only useful as context once a real offer is on the table.
“I’d consider anything reasonable.” This is usually said to avoid awkwardness and it creates more of it. Companies want to know what you expect. Vagueness doesn’t read as easygoing, it reads as unprepared.
What the research actually looks like
Levels.fyi has verified compensation data for tech roles at named companies, which is useful if you’re interviewing at a company they cover. The Stack Overflow 2024 Developer Survey has global salary distributions by role and region. LinkedIn Salary requires a premium subscription but the data is reasonably current. For non-tech roles, Glassdoor and Payscale are imperfect but directionally useful.
Doing this research takes two hours the first time. It takes 30 minutes the second time you’re job searching. The delta between a researched and unresearched salary answer, over a career, is not small.
If Craqly is helping you prep for the interview itself, the compensation conversation often comes up in mock sessions before the real thing. Running through your scripted answer a few times before the call tends to make the actual conversation feel considerably less stressful.
One thing that most guides miss
Salary expectations questions are not purely about the number. They’re also a signal about how you handle ambiguous, slightly uncomfortable conversations. Recruiters and hiring managers notice whether you get flustered, whether you hedge everything to death, or whether you state your position clearly and invite discussion. The skill of answering well is worth practicing separately from the research.
The number matters. How you deliver it also matters, more than most people think.