If you talk about your salary in the interview...

you are clearly high. Penelope may be talking about salary range high. But it wouldn't hurt to tell anyone who does this to put the crack pipe down.

I may be ticking off a load of recruiters. However, I am all about the open market. Companies should pay what skills are worth. Yeah recruiters, you could go through the entire interview process and be talking about a different range than the interviewee. But I think that a little competitive intelligence could keep a really good recruiter from getting into that situation. I have had situations as a recruiter (fire up the way-back machine) where I interviewed people that ended up getting a good bump-up in salary. Because we were willing to pay them what they (and by this I mean, their skills) are worth. All I needed to hear from the prospect was that they were "flexible" on salary. And the had to really mean it. Because, I mean, seriously, have you seen our benefits?

It's unfortunate that today, there is a game of one-up where each side is trying to take money from the other. I wish the process was more transparent on both sides; where the best interests of the candidate and the best interests of the company could be represented by some sort of moderator.  But there's not. So my recommendation to job seekers is that if you can't get a salary range out of a recruiter (hate to say but I never gave this out...that's just me), at least make sure that you are on a regulation playing field. No penalties, no time-outs.