Q: When applying for a job that asks you to mention your salary requirements, how do you calculate an appropriate range? What do you keep in mind when doing this? Your level of experience? The job description? The cost of living in the city the company is in? I don't want to list a range that's way out of my league, but I also don't want to sell myself short.

Sara

A: I would ignore the initial request.

I would prefer to start talking about the job and my qualifications to throwing numbers on the table before anyone knows very much about the other party.

This is the classic problem we all have when we negotiate our salaries.

If you aim too high, you may overprice yourself right out of a job; if you lowball yourself you don't get all that you can.

A range is a good thing to keep in mind. But you might want to keep it there -- in your mind -- and not put it on the table.

Factors for both parties to consider are present wages, experience, special qualifications, cost of living, the wages paid to others doing the same work, chance for pay growth.

As a job-seeker, I would prefer to get the employer to go first with the range they are presently paying in. Then, I would go for the top of that. I would have to have remarkable qualifications to come in above the range being paid to existing employees and I would not like to be the lowest paid person in the group.

Employers have the upper hand in these negotiations because they know the salary situation internally the hold the purse strings and they are the ones who can make the offer. But applicants are not powerless, especially not the best applicants.

Be reluctant to talk money until the application process has gone through several steps and try not to be the first one to put a number on the table.

If they force you: "How much are you making now?" get them to put their number on the table, too. Not a hypothetical number, but the amount they actually pay people to do that job.