Gehaltsvorstellung: what the salary question really asks — and how to answer it

Somewhere in many German postings sits a sentence that stops internationals cold: "Bitte nennen Sie uns Ihre Gehaltsvorstellung" — please state your salary expectation. In markets where the employer moves first, being asked for a number before the first conversation feels like a trap. In Germany it is a convention with known rules, and once you know them, the question loses most of its menace.

What the question means, precisely

Gehaltsvorstellung means your expected gross annual salary — Bruttojahresgehalt — for a full-time position, before taxes and social contributions. Gross-versus-net matters enormously in Germany: income tax and social insurance take a substantial share, so never reason from a net figure you have in mind from another country. Annual, because monthly figures are ambiguous — some German pay structures, especially under collective agreements, pay a 13th month or holiday and Christmas allowances, so the yearly total is the only clean unit. If a posting asks instead for your Wunschgehalt or your Gehaltsrahmen, it is the same question in different clothes.

Why they ask early

The unromantic reason: it is a screening field. A number far above the budgeted band ends the process before anyone invests time; far below can read as junior-for-the-role. That makes the question a compatibility check, not an opening bid in a negotiation — the negotiation, if you get there, happens later and starts from the number you gave. Which is exactly why the preparation matters: you are choosing your own anchor.

Doing the homework

You want a defensible range before you type anything. Sources worth triangulating: the salary reports and calculators of the big German platforms (StepStone and Gehalt.de publish them; kununu carries employee-reported figures), what comparable postings in tariff-bound industries disclose — collective agreements (Tarifverträge) are public, and public-sector pay tables (TVöD, TV-L) are entirely open — and your own network in the industry. Adjust for the axes that genuinely move German salaries: region, company size, industry, and whether the employer is tariff-bound. Then pick two numbers privately: the figure you will name, and the floor below which you decline. Name the first; never volunteer the second.

How to state it

In a form field, a single gross annual figure or a tight range is standard; in a cover letter, one matter-of-fact sentence near the end. Convention tolerates both a point figure and a narrow band — a wide band signals you don’t know your market. State it without apology and without theater: it is a data field, not a confession. If the posting does not ask, you are not obliged to volunteer a number anywhere. And answer honestly rather than strategically low — a figure you resent by month three is not a win, and German employers can and do hold you to the number you named.

The ground is shifting under the question

Transparency law is slowly changing who shows their number first. Since 2017, Germany’s Entgelttransparenzgesetz has given employees in companies with more than 200 staff an individual right to information about the median pay of comparable colleagues. The bigger shift is European: the EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970) requires, among other things, that applicants receive information about the starting pay or its range for a vacancy — in the posting or before the interview — and prohibits employers from asking candidates about their previous salary. The transposition deadline was 7 June 2026, and as of this writing Germany has missed it: the national implementation law is still pending, so check the current status when you read this. The direction of travel is unmistakable, though — the era of the employer knowing everything and the candidate guessing is ending.

Practical playbook

Compute your range from sources you can defend. Name a single gross annual figure (or a tight band) with a straight face, in the currency and unit the market uses. Keep your floor private. If asked about your current or previous salary, know that the European rules moving through implementation treat that question as off-limits — you can politely redirect to your expectation for this role. And once you have decided your number, be consistent everywhere: on that point, tooling helps — JobWin stores your answer once you’ve set it and fills the salary field the same way in every application, so your anchor doesn’t drift between forms written on different evenings.

The Gehaltsvorstellung question rewards exactly one thing: preparation. Do the homework once, decide your two numbers, and the field becomes what it always should have been — thirty seconds of typing, not a night of doubt.