When a contractor asks for your salary expectations, it is asking about total compensation while using the word salary. Answer in two parts. State what you earn now, line by line: base, bonus actually paid, vehicle, retirement match. Then give a range for total cash that depends on the seat’s scope and its bonus plan.
“So, what are your salary expectations?” Then the pause, which lasts about as long as it takes to wonder whether to round up. Most construction leaders fill it with their base salary plus ten percent, because the question said salary and ten percent sounded reasonable. That answer leaves out a bonus, a truck and a retirement match, and it prices the new seat off the old one. The firm will write it down anyway.
What is an interviewer asking when they ask about salary expectations?
They are asking whether the seat’s budget and your number can meet, and they mean the whole package even when they say salary. The firm has a band for base and a view on bonus. It needs to know early whether you fit inside both, or whether the conversation should end politely now.
In a first conversation it is a screen: the interviewer has a range and wants to know if you are inside it, above it, or so far below it that they wonder what is wrong. Later, the same words are the opening of a negotiation. The preparation is the same for both. Only the amount of detail changes.
The trap is the unit. Suppose you answer in base and the firm thinks in total cash. Your $150,000 lands as a modest number, and the offer that follows is built around it: $155,000 with a discretionary bonus and a vehicle allowance half the size of the truck you gave up. You got a raise on paper and lost money. The firm did nothing wrong. It priced the answer you gave.
So the first job is to know your own number in full.
How do you state the package you have now?
List it by component, in annual dollars, using what was paid, never what was promised. Base, bonus received last year, vehicle or allowance, retirement match, and anything else that arrives as money. Then add it up and say the total. Most people have never done the sum.
Take a senior project manager, as a worked example. Base salary is $150,000. The bonus target is 20 percent, but the bonus paid last year was $22,000. The vehicle allowance is $9,000 a year. The firm matches retirement contributions to the amount of $6,000. Total annual value is $187,000, and the figure this person has been carrying in their head is $150,000.
That is $37,000 the short answer never mentioned. Here is how to state each line.
| Component | What to state | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary | The annual figure on your last pay stub | Rounding up, then having to walk it back |
| Bonus | The amount paid, the year, and the target if different | Quoting target as though it were paid |
| Vehicle | Company truck with fuel, or the allowance in dollars | Leaving it out because it is not salary |
| Per diem | Whether you receive it, and on which jobs | Counting expense reimbursement as income |
| Retirement match | The employer’s annual contribution in dollars | Quoting a percentage nobody will convert |
| Equity or phantom stock | The instrument and what it has paid out | Stating a paper value as cash |
| Unvested amounts | What you forfeit by leaving, and the date | Raising it for the first time at offer |
Two of those lines have their own notes. A truck and an allowance are taxed differently, which our piece on the vehicle allowance works through. And a bonus figure means little without the plan behind it, so read the note on the bonus plan before you describe yours as reliable. If you are between jobs, state the last package you held and the month it ended, then answer the career gap as its own question. After several years out of the industry the old figure carries less weight, and our note on rejoining construction covers the routes back, including a step down in title.
Saying it aloud takes fifteen seconds: “I am at one-fifty base. Bonus paid twenty-two last year against a thirty target. Nine in vehicle allowance, and a six thousand match. Call it one eighty-seven all in.” A candidate who can do that is assumed to read a cost report the same way.
Your current package is a fact. The harder half of the answer is the part about the future.
How do you give a range for salary expectations without anchoring low?
Tie the range to the seat and state it as total cash. Name the scope you understand the role to carry, give a range of about fifteen percent from bottom to top, and say what would move you within it: the bonus plan, the vehicle, the size of the work.
In practice it sounds like this: “For a seat running two projects of that size with three people under me, I would expect total cash between two hundred and two-thirty, depending on how the bonus is built.” The range is now conditional on something the firm controls.
Three checks before you choose the numbers:
- Scope. A larger job, more direct reports or owner-facing responsibility each justify the upper half. Say which you are assuming.
- Published wage data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes wage data for construction managers across the United States and by metro area. It covers a broad occupation and base pay only, so use it as a floor for a leadership seat.
- Location. The same base goes further in some cities than others. Texas levies no state tax on wages and Georgia does, so an identical offer in Houston and in Atlanta leaves different money in your account. A CPA can put a figure on that in ten minutes.
If the interviewer pushes for a single number, give the midpoint and repeat the condition. Our note on negotiating an offer covers what happens after the letter arrives.
Where the law limits the salary-history question
Rules on asking about past pay are set state by state, and sometimes city by city. In several places an employer may not ask what you earn now at all.
California’s labor agency explains its salary history rule in plain terms: an employer generally cannot seek that information from an applicant, but it may ask about your salary expectations for the position, and you may volunteer your history if you choose. Colorado’s labor department describes a similar bar on asking about an applicant’s pay history under its equal pay law. Other states differ, and some have no such rule. Check the labor agency for the state where the job sits, and ask an employment attorney if something turns on it.
For you the practical point is narrower. Where the question is restricted, the choice to disclose is yours. If your current package is at or above market, volunteering it line by line usually helps, because it sets a floor the firm must clear. If you have been underpaid for years, you are under no obligation to hand over the anchor. Go straight to the range for the seat.
Selah Talent Partners carries this conversation for candidates as a matter of course: on a confidential executive search for mandates that cannot be publicly posted, the package is discussed with both sides before anyone sits down to interview. The candidates page describes how that begins, and no candidate is ever charged a fee.
The interviewer said salary out of habit. The offer will be written in every line, so that is how the answer should be given.
Sources and further reading
- Wage data, Bureau of Labor Statistics, construction managers (11-9021)
- Metro area, Bureau of Labor Statistics metropolitan wage estimates
- Salary history, California Department of Industrial Relations, Equal Pay Act questions
- Pay history, Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, Equal Pay for Equal Work Act