how to answer

“What are your salary expectations”: say the number without flinching

from the job pls team · practice guide, not a script

what they’re actually asking

Part screen, part negotiation opener. The company wants to know you are in range before spending five more hours on you, and some are also checking whether nerves will get them a discount. The answer has two components, and people only ever prepare one. The number comes from research. The delivery comes from practice, and delivery is where the money is actually lost.

what interviewers listen for

• Homework: a researched range for this role, level, and market, not a hopeful guess.
• Steadiness: a number said like a fact, not a question. Hesitation invites the low end.
• Flexibility without collapse: open on the full package, but not abandoning the range at the first pushback.

the common failure

The flinch. People research for hours, then say their number out loud for the first time ever in the live interview, and it comes out pitched up, hedged, and pre-discounted: “I was thinking, like, maybe somewhere around 70?” A number delivered as a question gets answered like one. The range was fine. The rep count was zero.

build your answer (yours, not a sample)

We don’t hand out sample answers — memorized scripts collapse under follow-up questions, and interviewers can hear them. Instead, excavate your own material:

1. Build the range from at least two sources (posted bands, levels data, people actually in the role). Anchor on the top half of what you find, and know your walk-away floor privately.
2. Choose the sentence shape: “Based on the role and my research, I'm looking at X to Y.” A range, stated once, without apology.
3. Decide your defer-or-answer policy in advance. If it comes up in screen one and you want to learn more first, practice THAT sentence too: a prepared deferral sounds like strategy, an improvised one sounds like evasion.

now practice it out loud

This is the most literal use of the retake loop there is: say your range out loud, listen for the flinch, retake until the number is boring. The goal is a figure that sounds like your home address. You should be on take five before a recruiter ever hears take one.

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