How to react to "what is your expected salary"?

Hi there,

Always be ready for this question.

For these interviews and all future interviews. And, for all future screening calls. 

This is a very hard one to advise on without knowing more about you. If you are an undergrad applying for an internship, your answer needs to be very different than someone in industry for 5 years coming into a specialist role as a project lead.

Please hire a coach. You can pay $300 to get the optimal, highest salary possible. Or, you can pay $0 and be very likely to undersell yourself or improperly negotiate.

I have successfulyl negotiated in every single one of my job offers (for BCG alone I doubled my signing bonus from $20k to $40k, but for other roles I successfuly increased salary, benefits, etc.)

Some general tips though:

1. Figure out market rates
2. Do not give a range (they will give the lowest)
3. Be professional/respectful, not demanding
4. Figure out if you work best via email or phone
5. Be ready to defend
6. Figure out your BATNA
7. Figure out what's important for you, important for them, easy for you to give up, easy for them to give up

Feel free to reach out for support!

Hi there,

1) The partners would like to know my salary expectations before extending the offer. Is this something common?  

This is not common in strategy consulting, but sometimes happens for experience hires. The reason is that the base salary is normally fixed.

2) That said, would you suggest replying my salary expectation to the HR? Or, as many “HR experts” suggests - do not mention salary expectation; ask about the company's salary range instead and ask them to give out the offer first before you make a decision?

I would recommend the following:

1) First, I would try to evade the question by saying any offer that would be in line with what is the usual range for a company like theirs should work well for you

2) If they still insist, I would do some research on the usual salary for that company and refer to what you found as expected value

Good luck!

Francesco

First of all, most firms have a fixed base salary for each role, so you won't really be able to negotiate that anyway. What you can negotiate usually is the signing bonus and the relocation bonus. 

Still, you need a prepared answer for this question. And a way of arguing for it. 

If you have the time for it, it helps to actually network with people who are in your target role to figure out their compensation (and then quote something slightly above). 

Otherwise, I'd recommend you get some professional help on this to make sure that you maximise the offer. 

Best,
Cristian

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Hello,

This is not an unusual question to ask. My advice would be the following: do your research to understand what market rates are, and then, as fellow coaches suggest here, quote something slightly higher. Talking to people who work in the role you are interviewing for, as well as people working in similar roles at similar companies, will be helpful here. Additionally, give them a specific number, not a range.

Hi,

This happened to me more for corporate strategy roles rather than T1/T2 consulting firms. Rationale is because typically global consulting firms have a fixed / standardized salary band. 

This has happened before particularly if you are an experienced hire because the firm also wants to know how compelling their offer would be to you, and if there are other things they can adjust to try and ‘sweeten the deal' for you (i.e. give you more tenure).

I would give a realistic estimation based on your current salary + benchmark salary of the role you are entering.

All the best!