What's Your Current Salary?

Why this one works

• It never says the current number. An offer built as a step on top of a current salary is priced against the last employer rather than against the job, and once the figure is in the room every conversation afterwards is about how big a raise the candidate has earned instead of what the role is worth.
• It is a redirect, not a refusal. "I'd rather not say" left standing on its own creates a silence the candidate usually fills badly; replacing the old number with a forward one gives the recruiter something to work with and keeps a friendly call friendly.
• The reason given is accuracy, not privacy — a number set elsewhere, for other work, isn't evidence about this job. That is true, it is not defensive, and it is very hard to argue with.
• The range is justified by the scope of the new role, stated in one clause, so it reads as a market rate rather than as a raise on an old salary.
• It ends on a question. Whoever names a number second is negotiating against a known band, and recruiters on screening calls answer this one far more often than candidates expect.