"What Salary Do You Expect?" -- The Ultimate Loaded Question
I've never been asked this question before, but I've heard about people struggling with it during interviews. Have you ever been asked this question? How did you deal with it?
Here's my situation. The company I've been working for recently asked if I was interested in full time. Then they asked how much salary I expected per month? For context, I started off doing only 8 hours a week, then recently was bumped up to 25 hours. I make $40 per hour, a pretty good rate.
But here's my issue: I initially thought that the fact that they even asked me meant that they expected me to ask for a raise of some sort. Otherwise, why not just keep me at my current rate and call it a day. But now I'm thinking that maybe they want me at a bulk discount; like they figure if they're giving me 40 hours, I should accept a monthly salary less than what $40 times 40 hours would be.
What do you think is most likely?