UpTrajectory Review

The BBC's careers desk has turned to a question that lands in almost every hiring conversation and still trips people up: what to do when an interviewer asks what you currently earn. The piece gathers advice from career experts on how to handle the salary question without underselling yourself or torpedoing your candidacy. It arrives at a moment when the old etiquette around pay disclosure is being actively rewritten by legislation, with a growing number of jurisdictions in the US and parts of Europe restricting or banning employers from asking about salary history altogether.

For a small-business owner, this cuts in both directions. If you are hiring, the salary-history question is a liability you may not have noticed: several US states and cities now prohibit it, and the UK's own pay-transparency framework is tightening. Asking it anyway exposes you to discrimination claims and, frankly, tends to anchor offers to a candidate's past rather than the value of the role. If you are the one being interviewed — and most owner-operators will sit on that side of the table at some point, whether pitching for a contract role or a board seat — the advice to deflect toward your target range rather than disclose your history is worth internalising.

What is genuinely useful here is the framing: the experts treat the salary question not as a trap to be feared but as an early negotiation move, one where the first number spoken sets the anchor. That is a point most careers coverage glosses over. We are slightly skeptical, however, of advice that assumes every candidate has the leverage to refuse the question outright. In a tight labour market, a candidate who stonewalls may simply lose the offer; the piece would be stronger if it acknowledged that the right tactic depends on how much bargaining power you actually hold.

The downstream effects matter more than the etiquette. Salary-history bans are correlated with higher pay for women and minority candidates precisely because they break the chain of underpayment following people between jobs. For small firms, that means the old habit of asking 'what are you on now?' was quietly perpetuating pay gaps — and abandoning it may force you to do the harder, healthier work of pricing the role properly against the market. That is an administrative burden, but it also produces cleaner internal pay structures and fewer awkward conversations with existing staff who discover a new hire was benchmarked to a higher external number.

Watch whether the UK moves from guidance to a formal ban, as the trajectory suggests. In the meantime, the practical move for any operator is to strip the salary-history question from your interview script and replace it with a published range for the role — which several US states already require and which most candidates now expect. If you are the interviewee, prepare a two-sentence deflection that pivots to your researched range without sounding evasive. Rehearse it. The first number in the room shapes everything that follows, and you want it to be yours.

“Experts explain what you should do if you are asked for your current salary during a job interview.” — BBC Business

Takeaway: Drop the salary-history question from your hiring script and publish a range for the role; if you are the candidate, deflect to your researched target and never anchor yourself to your past pay.