When asked “how much do you expect to earn” in a job interview, Bill Gates gives the definitive advice to get it right

It doesn’t matter how much you have prepared for a job interview or whether you have an impressive resume, because when push comes to shove, in that face-to-face job interview, it is quite common for us to have our nerves on edge. Because beyond meeting the requirements, that first impression matters a lot. Furthermore, the job interview is a minefield full of trick questions where a false step can be very costly.

Given that there are questions that hide more than what they say, you move along a fine line in which you have to try to answer honestly, bet on diplomacy and at the same time extract information and leave no room for doubt to get the job but not at any price. If there is a thorny question, it is ‘How much do you expect to earn?‘. Well, a person as influential and experienced as Bill Gates has a recommendation so as not to get the answer wrong.

This is how Bill Gates gets out of the quagmire of ‘How much do you expect to earn?’

If you are asked about your salary expectations, the scenario is the following: if you say a value above what the company has programmed, you may be left out of the selection process, but if your proposal is too low, it may also happen that you get a job with a salary lower than what you would like and that at the same time sounds like underestimating the value of your work and experience.

But Bill Gates has been there before and is clear about what to respond. And not just now, but it was in 2020 when the tycoon and billionaire behind Microsoft offers a way out of that thorny issue. More specifically in one of the interviews from the ‘State of Inspiration’ serieswhich pitted Gates face to face with basketball star Stephen Curry.

For Bill Gates, the best response to not closing doors and looking good is not to offer an exact figure and to focus on the future, diverting attention from salary to long-term value.

I hope the options package is good. I can take risks and I think the company has a great future, so I prefer to get stock options even over cash compensation.

I’ve heard other companies are paying too much, but treat me fairly and strengthen the options.

This is the move proposed by the tycoon, since in this way you reflect, on the one hand, your confidence in the company’s future project and, on the other, how you want to contribute to its success by applying your skills, so that the chances of achieving the contract are increased.

This should soon stop being a problem.

However, it is worth remembering that on June 7, 2026 comes into force the European Remuneration Transparency Directive (EU 2023/970). This is a salary transparency law by which companies are obliged to report the salary before the first interview.

Therefore, although Gates’ advice may be useful for companies that break the law, or when you are interviewing at a startup that is not European, in theory within Europe we will soon no longer need to go around to get an idea about the salary we are going to receive.

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Cover | Editing by Rubén Andrés (Unsplash (Arif Riyanto), Flickr (The Aspen Institute))

Via | The Economist