The salary question feels like it arrives without warning, which is exactly why most people freeze and give away the answer. It doesn't have to be improvised. Decide three numbers in advance — your floor, your target, and your anchor — and the question stops being a trap.
Floor, Target, Anchor
Decide these before the call, not during it. The anchor is the only one you say out loud first — it sits above your target on purpose, because the conversation moves down from wherever it starts.
When you're asked, the anchor becomes a band with a source behind it, not a bare figure: "Based on my research for this scope and market, I'm looking in the region of X to Y." Anchor at the top of what you can defend — the conversation will move down from there, not up.
Six real rewrites for the moment it comes up
Why "what are you currently earning?" is a different question
This one deserves its own answer, because it isn't really asking about your expectations — it's trying to anchor the new offer to your old salary instead of to the market value of the new role. The move is to redirect: give a researched range for the role you're interviewing for, and state plainly that you'd rather discuss the value of this role than your history. Rules on whether an employer can even ask this vary by country — worth checking your local law before the conversation.
If the number that comes back is lower than expected, or they push back on your anchor with "that's above our band," that's a different conversation with its own script — covered in the next guide.