The desired salary field is a filter and an anchor at the same time. Enter too little and you set the ceiling on your offer; enter too much and a screener drops the application before anyone reads the resume. The right entry depends on what the field accepts, so the tool below gives you all four versions.
Enter your target, say how flexible you are, and copy the version that matches the form.
Most applicant tracking systems pass the desired salary straight to the recruiter as a number next to your name. Some use it as a knockout: anything above the budget is filtered before a person looks. Either way, it is read as your ask, not as a conversation opener, so the number you enter is the number you will be negotiating down from.
The one exception is the optional text field. There, Negotiable is a legitimate answer and keeps the first number with the employer.
Start from the market, not from your current pay. Look at three or four postings for the same title and city that show a range, and at the salary data on Glassdoor or Levels.fyi, and take the middle of what you see for your experience. Then decide what you would actually accept; that is the floor of your range.
If the posting shows a range, answer inside it. A number above the posted maximum gets filtered; a number near the top signals you read the posting and value yourself at the senior end.
Entering 0 or 1 to dodge the question: many systems reject it, and a recruiter reads it as evasive. Entering 999999: same result. Entering a monthly figure in an annual field or an hourly rate in a yearly one: the application is filtered as either absurdly low or absurdly high. Read the label every time.
Entering your current salary instead of your target: the offer will match it. Entering a figure below your current pay by mistake: the tool above warns you if you add your current salary.
In FastApply you set your expected salary, currency and whether it is negotiable once, in Work Preferences. Every application form that asks for desired salary is answered from that, in the units the form uses, so the number is consistent across hundreds of applications.
Free answer tool
Free answer tool
Free answer tool
Free answer tool
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Set your answers once in FastApply and it fills them on every application, with a tailored resume for each job on Pro and Elite.
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