Always expect this question, “What is your salary expectation?”. You’d want to be careful not to overprice yourself and lose the job; you also don’t want to say an amount too low to take you home.

You might also be afraid that the interviewer will judge you harshly if you price yourself too high or too low, but that generally isn’t the goal.

Discussing salary early on protects both the employer and employee from time wasting.

There are different strategies to answering interview questions about your salary expectations, but the basis of all of them is doing your research ahead of an interview.

Do research on what the company pays

Discuss with people that have similar job, this will give you an idea of what this position should ideally pay. Use multiple sources to get a good sense of the going rate for the kind of job you’re interviewing for and take into account any additional skills and qualifications you have, the size of the company, the industry, and the location. This should give you a reasonable idea of what you can expect a company to offer to pay you.

Give a range.

By giving a salary range, you show that you’re willing to be flexible and work with your prospective employer.

When giving your salary range in an interview, try to keep the bottom of your range toward the mid-to-high point of what you’re looking for.

Turn the question around.

You can also respond by simply asking what the company is looking to pay.

You could say, ‘That's a great question—it would be helpful if you could share what the range is for this role”

Delay Answering

When you’re still learning the scope of a position and what benefits the company offers, you might prefer to delay answering questions about your salary expectations.

You can say something like

Right now, finding the right position for me is more important than salary. I’d love to learn more about the job, the company, and the entire benefits package before we talk about numbers.