alt Hacker News> My first question to any recruiter is now always "what's the salary range for this role?"
The concept of range isn't useful to ask though. If you say my range is $x to $y, all the company hears is that you'll work for $x. The $y part is irrelevant. Learned this early in my career, where every "$x to $y" invariably became an offer for $x.
So now in my initial intro call with any recruiter I just tell them my minimum, fully knowing that becomes the maximum offer. If they're ok with that we can keep talking, if not, that's cool, we both avoided wasting time.
Replies
> The concept of range isn't useful to ask though. If you say my range is $x to $y, all the company hears is that you'll work for $x. The $y part is irrelevant. Learned this early in my career, where every "$x to $y" invariably became an offer for $x.
Disagree, I've had "my range is X-Y", and the recruiter told me "for this role the range starts at Y+20%, are you ok with that".
That's why it's important to ask the recruiter, rather than wait to be asked.
That way you can respond to their range with something along the lines of "that sounds roughly what I was expecting", "okay, I'd probably be looking for the top end of that", "that's perhaps a little lower than I was expecting - is there enough room for flexibility for us to be able to continue talking?" or whatever. It's too early in the conversation to be doing a full salary negotiation, you're just making sure the role's at the right level.
There's a big problem with employers writing a senior-sounding job ad for a junior role - the salary range is a much more accurate indicator than a job description.