What to say when they ask what you’re looking for
The salary question is not a test of your worth. It is a negotiation move — and you can prepare for it like one.
Read itFree tools for the parts of your career nobody hands you a manual for — what you're worth, what a promotion actually takes, and how to tell a hard week from something that needs to change.
Work out where you sit against market, what to open with, and what five more years of not asking costs.
Open the calculator →Eight statements drawn from what actually gets discussed when promotions are decided.
Score yourself →Paste both, and see the language the posting leans on that your resume never uses.
Compare them →A short, private read on whether this is a hard stretch or something that needs to change.
Check in →Most people ask for the number they'd be relieved to hear. This works out the number to open with instead — and what it costs you to keep not asking.
Base only. Bonus and equity get negotiated separately, and mixing them in is how people talk themselves out of asking.
Pull three sources for your title, your metro, and your company size, then take the middle one. Posted ranges on live job ads are the most honest number you have access to.
Time in the seat, not time at the company.
Raises compound off the base you already have. Every year you stay behind, the gap grows on its own — this is the difference over five years, assuming ordinary annual increases on both paths.
Fill in the bracket yourself, and be specific — the number does the anchoring, the specifics do the convincing. Then say it out loud three times before the meeting. It should sound boring by the time it counts.
Nothing you type here is saved or sent anywhere. Bring your own market data; this does the arithmetic and the framing.
I've sat in the meetings where these decisions get made. This is what gets said about people in the room they're not in. Answer honestly — nobody sees this but you.
I am already doing work at the next level, not just doing my current level well.
I could state the criteria my company actually uses for this promotion, without guessing at them.
Someone more senior than my manager could name a result I delivered this year.
I keep a written record of my work with numbers attached, and it is current.
I have taken on something visible outside my own team in the last twelve months.
There is a real business need for this role — not just a title I would like to have.
I have asked my manager directly what would have to be true for me to be promoted.
Someone who sits in those decisions would speak up for me while I am not in the room.
Answered 0 of 8.
Right now the honest answer is that you don't yet know what you're being measured against — and that isn't a character flaw, it's the most common gap there is. Before anything else, ask your manager one question: what would have to be true for me to be ready? Write down the answer in their words. You can't close a gap you can't see.
This is the most frustrating place to sit and the most fixable. The work is real; the record of it isn't. Spend the next month building evidence — dated, specific, with numbers on it — and getting one person other than your manager to see it.
Look at your two lowest answers. Those are your next quarter. Everything else is already working, and pouring more effort into the parts that are already strong is exactly how people stay where they are.
There's nothing left to build. The next move is a conversation, not another project — and the usual reason it doesn't happen is that nobody puts it on a calendar. Put it on yours this week.
A reflection tool, not an assessment. It's here to make a pattern visible; what you do about the pattern is the actual conversation.
Before a person reads your resume, software decides whether a person ever will. This shows you the language the posting leans on, and which of it you're missing.
Both boxes stay in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, nothing is sent — you can disconnect from the internet and this still works.
These come up more than once in the posting and not at all in your resume. Start here, and only where the claim is true.
Nothing in this group. The language the posting repeats is already in your resume.
Lower stakes. Worth a look, not worth contorting a bullet point over.
Nothing in this group.
No overlap found yet.
A missing word is a prompt, not an instruction. If you have genuinely done the thing, use their word for it — the person reading is scanning for their own vocabulary, not yours. If you have not done the thing, leave it out. Keyword stuffing survives the software and then fails in the first ten minutes of a conversation with a human being.
This is not an applicant tracking system and it can't see one. Real screening software also reads your formatting, your section headings, and your dates. What it can show you is the vocabulary gap, which is the part you can do something about today.
Burnout rarely announces itself. It shows up as a slow drift you keep explaining away. Eight questions, answered honestly, will tell you more than another weekend of catching up will.
I check work messages outside working hours without really deciding to.
I am tired in a way a weekend does not fix.
I have quietly stopped doing something I used to enjoy because of work.
I say yes to new work before I have checked what it pushes out.
Small requests land heavier than they should.
I could not tell you what finished looks like for most of my week.
I feel behind the moment I open my laptop.
I have thought about leaving without having anywhere in mind to go.
Answered 0 of 8.
Nothing here is waving at you. Worth keeping the habit of checking, though — this drift is far easier to catch early than to climb out of later.
A few things are creeping. This is the stage where a boundary costs you almost nothing to set, which is exactly why it's the stage everybody skips. Take the single statement you scored highest and change one thing about it this week.
This has been going on long enough to feel normal, and that's the part to take seriously. Rest won't resolve it on its own, because the load hasn't changed. Something has to come out of the week, and it will not leave on its own.
No planner, system, or productive weekend is going to touch this. What you're describing is a load bigger than one person can carry, and the fix is structural — the job, the boundaries, the support around you, or all three. Please talk to someone: your doctor, a therapist, or me. You are not failing at coping. You're being asked to carry too much.
This isn't a diagnosis and it isn't medical advice. If the answers worry you, that's worth taking to your doctor or a therapist — and I'm here too.
Longer thinking on careers, workplace dynamics, and getting unstuck — written for the moments the tools above can't cover on their own.
The salary question is not a test of your worth. It is a negotiation move — and you can prepare for it like one.
Read itBurnout rarely announces itself. It shows up as a slow drift you keep explaining away — and no planner is going to fix a load problem.
Read itI’ve sat in the meetings where these decisions get made. The outcome almost never came down to how hard someone was working.
Read itWe’ll explore your goals and see how I can support your next steps.
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