What are your salary expectations?

Short answer

Deflect once to ask for the budgeted range, since whoever names a number first sets the anchor and the recruiter already has one; if pressed, give a researched range with your target near its bottom and tie it to market rather than to your current salary.

Why this question is asymmetric

The recruiter almost always knows the approved band before they ask, and you usually do not. That makes the question a request for you to bid against yourself. If your number lands below the band they will pay you what you asked for rather than what the role was worth, and the gap persists through every subsequent percentage-based raise. If it lands far above, you may be screened out before anyone has assessed you.

Understanding that asymmetry is what the good answer is built on. You are not being difficult by asking for the range first — you are asking for the information they already have.

The first response: deflect once

Deflect exactly once, politely, and pair it with a reason and a question. The pairing is what keeps it from reading as evasion.

"I want to make sure we are in the same ballpark before I anchor on a number, since I do not yet know the full scope of the role or how the package is structured. What range has been budgeted for this position?"

Many recruiters will simply tell you, because they are also trying to avoid wasting time. If they give you a range, you now negotiate inside a known space, and your target should sit in its upper portion rather than its middle.

If they press

Do not deflect twice. A second refusal starts to cost you goodwill for no gain. Give a range, not a point, and construct it carefully.

Put your actual target at or near the bottom of the range you state, because the number that gets remembered and negotiated down from is the lower one. A range of eighteen to twenty-two lakhs will produce an offer near eighteen, so state it only if eighteen genuinely works.

Attach the number to market rather than to your history: "Based on what I have seen for senior backend roles with this scope in the NCR market, I am looking at X to Y." That framing matters because it makes the number about the role's value rather than about your last employer's budget, which is the pivot you need if you are currently underpaid.

The current-salary follow-up

"What is your current CTC?" is the trap, because an honest answer converts the negotiation from the role's worth to your current pay plus a customary increment. In several jurisdictions asking is restricted; in India it is routine and often required for documentation, so flat refusal is impractical.

The workable move is to answer the question they should have asked:

"My current package is structured quite differently, so a direct comparison is not very informative. For this role, given the scope we have discussed, I am targeting X. Happy to share documentation once we are at the offer stage."

That concedes the process without conceding the anchor.

Evaluate the whole package

Base pay is one line. Before you accept or counter, get the full picture: fixed base, the target bonus and whether it has historically paid out, any equity along with its vesting schedule and whether it is real stock or a phantom scheme, retirement contributions, insurance for you and dependants, and the notice period and any bond or clawback terms.

Two of these change the arithmetic more than candidates expect. A large "variable" component that pays out at sixty percent is a pay cut disguised as a raise. And a four-year vest with a one-year cliff means leaving at eleven months forfeits all of it, which materially affects how you should weigh two competing offers.

Negotiating without risk

Once an offer is on the table you have more leverage than at any other moment, and using it is normal rather than rude. Make one clear, justified counter rather than several rounds of nibbling, name a specific number instead of asking vaguely for more, and say plainly that you want to accept. Offers are essentially never withdrawn over a single reasonable, respectful counter — the fear of that is what leaves most of the money on the table.

If the number genuinely cannot move, ask what can. A signing bonus, an earlier review date, a title, or the leave and remote-work terms often come from different budgets than base pay does.

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© 2026 Preptima. Originally published at preptima.com.