When coaching students and professionals in negotiating salaries, I typically advise deflecting the salary history question.
However, this is especially difficult on an online application. Online applications leave little or no room for “I would like to know more about the job requirements before speaking about compensation” or “my understanding is that this role in this city typically pays between x and y.”
Offering past salary information gives the interviewer an unfair advantage in that if you have the skills they are seeking, your salary history should be completely irrelevant. Having past salary information enables the employer to pigeon-hole an applicant’s pay based on arbitrary information rather objective criteria.
I was excited to read in Claire Cain Miller’s May 1 New York Times article, How a Common Interview Question Fuels the Gender Pay Gap (and How to Stop It), that some states (MA and CA), cities (NYC and Philadelphia) and large employers like Amazon have banned the past salary question from their application or interview process.
If you live in an area or want to apply to a company yet to ban this wicked question, use the deflection strategy above and attempt to dodge the prior salary bullet.