Negotiations suck, nobody likes doing them. Due to the combination of lack of information on your end, this is generally a nerve wracking experience.
One of the most common traps people fall into is the old “what are your salary expectations?” question trap.
Don’t be fooled, this is a trap to gather more information from you. Otherwise people wouldn’t lead with this, they would instead tell you what the expected pay is, or at least the pay range.
If a recruiter knows that the range of a role is between 100-200k for your experience, they have no incentive to pay you close to the upper end of that range.
So what do you do when asked this dreaded question?
- Be aware of your state laws. If this is California (for instance) the question about salary history is banned (See here).
- Do not answer this question (ie say that you don’t have a figure in mind), be adamant about this / say that you want to be paid fairly for your role and experience, but never ever give a number
- Be well aware of the market rate of your position (even better if you can get exact figures by level and YOE)
- If you cannot avoid giving an answer you could answer in the following way:
- First as mentioned above you MUST know the range for the position and level in question (say it is 100k-200k)
- Say something like “I know this position generally pays 100k on the low end and 200k on the high end for a candidate like myself based on <a, b, c> data I’ve found. I want to be paid as close to the high end as possible based on <x, y, z information + internships etc>. What can we do to get me there?”.
Also watch this video to learn how NOT to negotiate: