Hey,

I’ve had this one in a drawer for a while. Today it comes out.

I’m launching a series inside this newsletter on the psychological phenomena quietly shaping recruitment. Every two weeks: one of those pesky little things influencing your outcomes, how to spot it, and more importantly what to do about it. How to use it, instead of getting used by it.

Let’s start with the big one.

ANCHORING - why the first number in salary negotiations wins (and it doesn't have to be theirs)

Imagine this:

Six minutes into a twenty-minute screening call. You’ve been talking about the role, the team, the stack. Then the recruiter asks the question they always ask:

“So, what are your salary expectations?”

You say a number. It’s the number you’ve had in your head since you saw the ad, which is the number you were on at your last job, plus 5–10%. She says “great, thank you,” and moves on. 11 weeks later you sign for almost exactly that number.

You never find out the range went 18k higher.

What’s happening

Anchoring: the first number on the table becomes the reference point everyone adjusts from. Including you.

Tversky and Kahneman, 1974. They spun a wheel of fortune in front of people, then asked what percentage of UN member states were African. The kicker?

The wheel was rigged to stop on 10 or 65.

Landed on 10: the median guess was 25%.
Landed on 65: 45%.

Same question. Twenty points apart. And everyone watched the wheel spin. They all knew the number was random. It influenced the answer anyway.

A salary question isn’t a random wheel. It’s a wheel you spin yourself, and then live inside for two+ years.

Why your brain does it

Truth is, nobody knows for 100%. I went looking, and the research isn’t settled. But there are two good guesses, and both are worth having.

Guess one: you stop too early

Their number lands: $55k. You think, that’s low, I’m worth more than that. So you start moving up. $56? $58? Could I defend $58? Yeah, probably. Stop. You say $58. You could have defended $64. With the right framing, $72.

You never find out, because you stopped at the first number you could argue for. Which very often is not the best one. And “first” was decided by where you started walking from. Which was their number.

Guess two: you only look one way.

The second they say $55k, you can't help it - you start checking if that's fair. Sounds harmless. It isn't. Because "checking if $55k is fair" means looking for reasons it might be. And you find them. Your rent. Your last payslip. The guy on your team who's probably on about the same. You always find them.

You've had a real career and well... life, so there's evidence in your head for any number you want.

But you went looking for reasons about their number. So that's what's in your head now. Then they ask for yours, and their number is the only thing you've got to reach for. Say they'd opened with $78k. You'd have gone looking for different things to justify the number - the project you carried alone, the thing only you know how to fix.

Same you. Same career. Their number decided which half you went looking at.

The tells

1. The early ask. “Just so we don’t waste each other’s time, what’s your expectation?” Asked before you know the scope, the team, or the real title. Sometimes it’s on the application form. They say the reason is efficiency. The real one is to see what they’re working with.

2. “Up to.” “The range goes up to seventy.” Up to isn’t a range. The 70k is for a unicorn who doesn’t exist. The average hire comes in at 58k. Ask what the last three people in this role actually started on.

3. The currently question. “What are you on currently?” That’s not information about your value. It’s information about how good your last negotiation went and it copy-pastes every mistake you made then into this one. Answer with anything other than a redirect and you’ve anchored yourself.

The play

Contrary to what you’ve been told: go first.

The evidence is boring and consistent.

Galinsky and Mussweiler ran negotiation after negotiation and found the same thing every time: whoever named a number first came out better off.

Not by a hair. Consistently.

Then they did something more interesting. They threw out everything except two numbers: what got asked at the start, and what got agreed at the end.

Show me the opening number from any one of those negotiations and I could tell you roughly where it finished.

That's the part worth sitting with. All the arguing in the middle. All the justifying, the pushing, the back-and-forth you're dreading - it moves the final number less than the number that opened the conversation did.

So you need your number before the conversation. Not during it.

Three things make an anchor hold:

Precision. $78,500 anchors harder than $80,000. Round numbers read as a wish. Precise ones read as the output of a calculation and they invite a counter of $76k rather than $70k. Janiszewski and Uy found precise anchors produce measurably smaller adjustments: people move away from them in smaller units.

A reason. The anchor doesn’t need a good reason. It needs a reason. “$78,500 - that’s in line with the other two processes I’m in.” The number does the work. The reason just gives it somewhere to stand. Don’t over-explain yourself.

A floor you’d accept. “$78 to $85” means $78. The bottom is the only number they hear. Never name a range you’d be unhappy landing at the bottom of.

Then anchor on what isn’t money: start date, title, the scope of your first six months.

Those get anchored too, and almost nobody thinks to defend them.

The counter-play

They asked first and you can’t dodge. Then deflect: “I’d want to understand the scope before putting a number on it what’s the range?” Often they’ll just tell you.

If they press, do one thing before you answer: think about your own target. Galinsky and Mussweiler killed the first-offer advantage three different ways, and that was one of them.

Then: a researched range, target at the floor. Never your current salary.

The line

"I'm looking for $78,500" is safe. It's what you want. Nobody can catch you out on what you want.

"I've got another offer at $82k" is not safe. That either exists or it doesn't.

Sometimes they ask to see it. Sometimes they just say "then you should probably take that one" - and now you're explaining why you're still sitting here.

Ask for anything you like. Don't invent things that can be checked.

One rep this week

Before anyone asks: write your number down. Precise, not round. One sentence of reasoning underneath it.

Ten minutes. The point isn’t the research. It’s that you never get asked cold again.

Best,

Patryk

Next issue: the person interviewed before you had a bad day. That’s worth more to you than anything on your CV.

Season 1, Issue #1 · Hit reply - which of these have you caught this week?

Research if you want to dig deeper yourself:

• Guess one, “you stop too early” — Epley & Gilovich (free PDF): http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/brenner/mar7588/Papers/epley-gilovich-psysci2001.pdf
• Guess two, “you only look one way” — Strack & Mussweiler (open access): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3891817/
• Why going first wins — Galinsky & Mussweiler, “First Offers as Anchors”: https://business.columbia.edu/faculty/research/first-offers-anchors-role-perspective-taking-and-negotiator-focus
• The original wheel-of-fortune study — Tversky & Kahneman (1974): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_effect