Excellent question. I have lots of thoughts, so I'll try to summarize.

1. This is just the reality of negotiation: sometimes you'll find out you're pretty far apart when they finally make an offer. The value of your time matters, but in general I think the payoff when you DO command top dollar at a good company is worth the time investment. (Think of this from a Sales perspective - they deal with hundreds of leads, often narrowing them down to the best-qualified leads and closing only a few deals. That time working with unqualified leads is not wasted per se, it's an investment to get to the good leads where they make their money.) 2. Signaling is important and you should continuously do this throughout your interview and negotiation process. My one-sentence strategy summary for interviews is "You're telling them a story about how their company will be better if you're a part of it." Your job in the interview processes not to save time—it's to get the best job offer possible so you can negotiate or walk away if it's not a good fit.

I realize this is controversial, but I think it's best to not think of interviews that don't lead to job offers as time wasted, but as time invested in finding a good fit. If you're interviewing for a huge volume of jobs that always end with an offer far below your range, you may want to evaluate whether you're applying to the right jobs. But if you occasionally interview and find out that they can't met your pay requirements, you can just move on to the next opportunity.

One last thing: Make sure you're doing market research to determine the value of your skillset and experience in your industry. If your market research confirms your salary expectations, then keep interviewing. If it doesn't, then it's possible you're at a company that really values your work and you might consider the opportunity cost of leaving.

Does this help? If I can clarify anything, let me know!

This exactly. I'm senior in my field (and pretty damn good), and many times recruiters will contact me about a position that sounds like a great opportunity - for example, I was recently contacted by a large financial services company who wanted to hire a senior manager to lead a cloud services team. When I told them my salary expectation, they said their range topped out at half that.

First, I was a bit shocked to hear that Fortune 500 companies with $USD revenue in the billions would hire senior managers and want to pay them what would be considered an entry level salary for a good programmer right out of university, but honestly, I've defaulted to just telling them my salary because I want to avoid all the time wasting that multiple interviews would require, just to get to the point where they really like me, and would I please consider their great position where I'd have more responsibilities, longer hours, at half the salary...

> many times recruiters will contact me

Recruiters are easy: "What is the client's targeted range for this position?" or "What have you placed other people for at this company?"

If the top-end of the range is within some arbitrary percentage of your target, pursue, otherwise: "no thanks!"

You can turn it around on them a little bit by replying "this sounds like it may be a good fit for me, but I'll need a salary range from you in order to move forward" and then the whole conversation is short circuited.

Third-party recruiters and staffing agencies won't have this conversation or play this game at all: they'll be 100% upfront with you upon demand.

"In-house recruiters" would require that kind of short-circuiting, and it will be met with varying results.

Asking: "what is the top end of your current employees' salary range for X role/experience?" can be good, too, to preempt the conversation.

It's not asking them to make an offer or anchor a price for you specifically, but will save everyone time when you discover that the top-end is 40% lower than you would even interview for.

If the prospective team is large and diverse enough, there will exist people that are more experienced and more-compensated than you. At that point you will at least know that they're paying it to someone.

If they're not paying anyone what you expect: you do not want to be the most well-compensated or smartest person in a role at a company and should pass on general principles.

> How do I signal to a client, "I'm expensive -- and worth it!" without saying, "Hey, can you afford me? Because otherwise let's not even talk."

You're missing a step in your sales process, which is the qualification part. Before letting a conversation go into much details or letting it turn into an interview call, take control and state that you'd like to to spend 10-15 minutes asking questions to make sure they're a good fit so you can make best use of each others' time. Then ask:

- "So tell me, why are we talking here today? What is it exactly that brought us into this conversation?" [Let them throw up their problems on the table, but only in broad strokes.] (~5-10min)

- What their decision process is and how they'll fit in [in passing] (~1-2min)

- How urgent it is for them to fix the problem [if it's not clearly urgent] (~1-2min)

- What their ballpark budget is [~2-3min]

Most prospects resist giving a figure at this stage. A trick to get them to give a ballpark is to announce a scary-sounding range. As in "hold, the type of contracts I work on start at $5k and go as high as $500k. I don't necessarily need your specific number, but can you at least let me know where you more or less fit in that range so I can know how much I can help you?"

Sometimes, there's an obvious and intuitive mismatch between what their problem is and the budget they're willing to allocate towards fixing it. If you suspect they've deeper pockets than what they said, you can occasionally hold their hands and walk them through their own numbers. e.g. "Hold, let me try to see if I get it right. You just told me your team of 6 engineers was on this for 4 months and failed to make this work. Depending on how you pay them that likely makes it a $150-250k type of problem. Are you sure your $20-30k budget range will allow you to solve it?" [Then see how high they could actually go, without negotiating or promising anything on your end.]

That way you won't waste time going over prospect problems for hours on end without the slightest clue of whether it'll be worth your time or not. If they're clearly under your number, say it up front upon [dis-]qualifying them. Either politely stop the conversation there, or spend the rest of your meeting giving them a few good pointers. [Then ask for a few referrals.]

When in doubt: it's better to be the expensive consultant that "we couldn't afford" than the one "we are getting for a steal."

With appropriate qualification, you'll get those referrals and the respect.

I just come right out and basically say the latter to inquiries and it's fairly prominent on my resume as well.

I enjoy both what I do and the company I'm at, which puts a clear floor on what I'll entertain. If I can't get confidence early in the process, it leads to a lot of wasted time. In practical terms, that means I invest less than an hour before figuring that out. ("I'm pretty happy here and my current comp starts with an X" often cuts the conversation off right then, which is ultimately best for both sides. It's just business.)

I won't say that I'd never consider a pay cut to change roles, but I work for money, for me and my family, and I'm going to try to maximize my and my family's happiness (financial security included).

> I just come right out and basically say the latter to inquiries and it's fairly prominent on my resume as well.

How do you word it on your resume? (I'd like to steal the verbiage. <grin>)

Most people reading this resume online shouldn't bother contacting me. I'm happy at __XXX__ (the work, the business, and the leadership) and very well compensated here.

If you believe that you have a position for which you honestly think I'd be interested, please feel free to contact me. I insist however on restricting phone calls to principals only. I have too much to do in my day to field cold-calls from head-hunters looking to fill their Rolodexes with my name or the names of my colleagues. In fairness to my company and my colleagues, I won't assist you on a fishing expedition.

If you are a headhunter reading this, please take a moment to consider whether the position you have to fill truly fits like a glove, before investing your precious time (and mine) on a phone call. Headhunters are encouraged instead to e-mail, as this takes less of your time, and is less intrusive to my workday.

Thanks for your consideration.

(That's maybe a little aggressively anti-headhunter, especially if you're in job-search mode, which I'm not. I have nothing against recruiters per-se, but I also don't want to chit-chat on the phone with them unproductively for both of us...)

Just curious, is you current employer aware of your resume and what do they think about it?

They (probably) are, in that I submitted the URL to them when I originally applied 13+ years ago and it's been used by different parts of the company for various corporate purposes over the years (board/VC decks, recruiting, depositions, etc).

Which angle are you concerned about: that I have a resume live on the internet, or that the contents are what they are(, or something else)?

As an employer, I would never worry about an employee having a resume out there (or being on LinkedIn/theLadders/other), nor do I care what content they put on the web that isn't company-proprietary. If a company thinks they want to control such things, they probably ought to find better things to concentrate on, IMO.

This is me, too. If you know what you're worth and what salary or range you are willing to take, you can just answer the question. I like to dodge the question about previous salary if it's lower than I want, but if there's a number that would make you happy that you know is in step with the market, you can just say it.

Have you thought about lowering the hours worked per week? For instance, if they aren't willing to pay you a 40hr/week salary, would they be alright paying you less but you only work 25hr/week (putting in enough productivity in those hours to warrant paying such a high price for your services)

I've done that. In fact, the last client I got responded to my rate by saying, "We can't afford that." So I said, "I can't lower my rate, but we can see what I can accomplish with 50% of the hours." And I got the gig. We're now towards the end of that contract, and now both of us are in a better position to know what/whether I can deliver what I promise.

Still you have to know what you're going into. If I'm looking for a 40/hr week gig (consulting or staff), I'm going to be less thrilled with 20 hours a week.

Or arguably, if you are close enough in the salary range, accept a 10% lower salary for 5 weeks of vacation.