Candidates prepare for everything else. The competency examples get rehearsed until they’re smooth, somebody has read the last annual report. Then a recruiter asks what salary they’re after and out comes whatever number surfaces first, which is nearly always their current salary with a bit added on.
That number describes your employment history. It says nothing about the job you’re applying for, and the gap between the two can be enormous.
It starts before anyone has spoken to you
Plenty of application forms now carry a salary expectations field, and a lot of them won’t let you submit without one. This is the worst possible moment to commit to anything, since all you’ve got is the advert.
If the field takes free text, write “negotiable, depending on the full scope of the role” and think no more about it. Nobody has ever been rejected for that. If it insists on a figure, put the top of your researched range in rather than the middle. You can always come down. Climbing back up after you’ve anchored yourself low is close to impossible, and if the role is being filtered on salary anyway, being screened out of something underpaid is not the disaster it feels like.
Why it comes up so early
Having spent a long time on the hiring side, I can tell you the reason is almost always mundane. Recruiters have been burned by running someone through three rounds, a panel and a written task, only to find out at offer stage that the candidate wants £70,000 for a job budgeted at £48,000. Asking early prevents that.
Which matters mostly because of how it changes your tone. Candidates who hear the question as an ambush go vague and guarded, and I’ve seen that cost people far more than any figure they could have named. Answer it plainly, then get back to talking about the work.
Knowing your number is most of the work
Everything else here is delivery. This part is preparation, and it’s where the money is actually won or lost.
You need to know what the role pays. Not what you earn now. Not the number you’d accept on a bad week when the search has dragged on. What comparable organisations are currently advertising for comparable roles, and which variables push that figure around: seniority, sector, London weighting, agency versus in-house, permanent versus contract.
For this, sector-specific job boards beat general salary calculators, because a calculator gives you an average smeared across everyone who has ever held that job title, whereas a board shows you what employers in your field are advertising this month. Take the events industry, where what event roles actually pay across the UK shifts sharply between charity and corporate work, and where freelance day rates describe a completely different world from salaried packages. Sector context like that is invisible in a generic figure.
Do this before the first call. Doing it afterwards just tells you how much you left behind.
Saying it out loud
Give a range, and set the bottom of it at a number you’d be genuinely pleased with. The bottom is what gets written down.
Phrase it something like: “Based on what I’m seeing for similar roles at this level, I’m looking at somewhere between £52,000 and £60,000, though I’d want to understand the whole package before I commit to anything.” That’s enough to show you’ve done your homework while leaving them room to work with.
Keep the range narrow. A candidate who says £45,000 to £70,000 has told the recruiter they haven’t researched the market, and the recruiter will hear £45,000.
If you honestly can’t answer yet
Sometimes the question lands before you know enough about the job to say anything sensible. That’s fair, provided you’re not planning to duck it indefinitely.
“I’d like to get a proper handle on the scope before I put a number on it. What have you budgeted for the role?” works perfectly well on a first call, and a good number of recruiters will just tell you. If it comes round a second time, give your range. Dodging twice reads as gamesmanship, and it lingers.
The offer is where things actually move
Screening isn’t negotiation. Nothing shifts until they’ve decided they want you specifically, which is the first moment in the process you hold anything at all. By then they’ve spent weeks on the search, and going back to market is a genuinely unattractive prospect for a hiring manager who has already pictured you in the role.
Ask for the full package in writing before you respond to any of it. When you do push, anchor to the market rather than your circumstances. “Comparable roles are advertising between X and Y” carries weight in a way that a mortgage or a nursery bill, however real, simply won’t, because one of those is an argument about the job and the other is an argument about you.
Then be specific. Vague dissatisfaction rarely moves anything; a hiring manager who hears “I’d sign today at £58,000” has a concrete decision to take upstairs.
The parts that aren’t salary
Occasionally the base really is fixed, and no amount of skill will shift it. Even then there’s usually something else in play. An early salary review at six months rather than twelve. A signing bonus, which often sits in a different budget entirely. Extra leave, a training allowance, compressed hours, or a job title that sets you up better for the move after this one.
So ask what’s flexible. Managers who can’t touch base pay are frequently very willing on everything else, and by that stage they want the thing signed as much as you do.
