Ask for More

Never say the first number. Make them go first. That advice is built on one fact about how hiring used to work: the company knew what the job paid and you did not. That gap is closing. The deadline for European Union countries to write the Pay Transparency Directive into national law passed in June 2026, and a growing list of American states already require a salary range in the advert itself. When the range is printed before you apply, you cannot make them go first. They already did. This book resolves the argument that salary advice has been having with itself for thirty years, in one line: go first when you know the range, and do not when you do not. Then it does the rest of the work. What is actually on the table besides base pay, and why base is the least flexible thing there. How to find the range an employer will really pay, rather than the one it published. How to work out what the vacancy is costing them, which moves offers far more than any benchmark. The exact words for the counter, for the current salary question, and for the moment they say it is above the band. What to ask for when the salary genuinely will not move, and the seven places the money is hiding instead. No promised percentage. No script that makes an employer double an offer. An honest account of the small number of situations where asking is genuinely risky, and what changes when you are asking inside a company you already work for, which is a different game with different rules.

• The one rule that settles the go first argument, and when each side of it applies
• Why a published range is an opening position rather than a fact
• How to find the range an employer will actually pay, and where you sit in it
• Working out what the open role is costing them, which decides more than any benchmark
• The exact wording for the counter, and why offering three routes beats making one demand
• Seven things to ask for when the base salary will not move
• How to answer that is above our band, we do not negotiate, and we need an answer by Friday
• Why asking for a raise inside a company follows completely different rules

• Anyone holding an offer and wondering whether to ask for more
• People applying where the salary range is now published, and unsure what to do with it
• Anyone who has been told never to name the first number
• Employees preparing to ask for a raise rather than a new offer
• First time negotiators who want the words, not the theory

1. 01Introduction: The advice was written for a world that is ending
2. 02Part One: Before the conversation
3. 03Part Two: The conversation
4. 04Part Three: The answers you will get
5. 05Part Four: After
6. 06Closing: Four things to remember

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