Prepare all you like, but there is often still one job interview question that leaves you feeling uncomfortable: how much do you currently get paid?
In the UK, employers are within their rights to ask. Applicants, meanwhile, are under no obligation to answer. It's a bit like being asked to reveal your browser history - legal to ask, entirely optional to share.
Recruiters have been encouraged to stop posing questions about salary history, and in the EU, new rules will prevent them from doing so altogether. But in the UK, there's still a chance it comes up, so how best should you answer?
First, the legal backdrop. When interviewing or deciding on new staff, employers must not discriminate based on so-called protected characteristics, including age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.
Sometimes it feels like interviewers, and interviewees, tip-toe around the subject of money - as if salary were a shameful secret rather than the entire point of having a job.
Louise Rudd, a senior adviser at the workplace advice and conciliation service Acas, says there are no regulations preventing employers from asking about current salary or salary expectations. She says employers who do want to know should ask each applicant the same questions to ensure fair treatment. Consistency: the one thing HR loves more than acronyms.
A few years ago, a campaign was launched urging employers to stop asking new recruits how much they were paid in previous jobs. It had its own hashtag - #EndSalaryHistory - because nothing says grassroots movement like a hashtag.
The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for women and gender equality, said asking the question risked maintaining historic unfair differences in pay due to gender, race and disability inequality. Rather than offering a salary based on skills, experience and performance, it meant employers rewarded an individual's perceived worth and negotiating skills instead. In other words, the loudest person in the room wins, not the most qualified.
The Recruitment and Employment Confederation supported the move, urging recruiters not to ask.
Employers in the EU will be banned from asking about salary history under new rules being rolled out across the bloc. That's not in the UK's Cabinet Office plans, which instead concentrate on telling employers to publish salary information in job adverts. A novel concept: telling people what the job pays before they apply.
When you're going for a new job, you can reveal your current salary if you're happy to. Some people asked by BBC News out and about in London suggested they would reply with an inflated salary - so they get paid more in the next job. However, the risks of lying in an interview can far outweigh the possible reward. Unless you enjoy explaining discrepancies to a background-check company.
There are no requirements for you to disclose your salary if you don't want to. Rudd says some people might prefer to give their salary expectations, or outline their understanding of the salary range for the role. Recruitment firms often say applicants could instead focus on their skills and experience, so those are used as a measure of what they should be paid, not their salary history.
Shazia Ejaz, director of campaigns at the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, says jobseekers should approach questions about pay with "realism but also confidence". "Candidates can focus on showcasing the value they bring, the benefits that matter most to them and to go to the interview knowing the market rate for the role," she says. "Jobseekers who have done their homework on salaries and can explain the contribution they will make are in the strongest position to secure the right package."
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