In my experience, most recruiters push harder to get a number than the hypothetical conversations in the article. Maybe I'm not as much of a charismatic speaker

In my experience, most recruiters push harder to get a number than the hypothetical conversations in the article. Maybe I'm not as much of a charismatic speaker as some. Fortunately, for the most part, they don't care if the number is your current salary or your expected salary. Generally, they are willing to meet or slightly exceed my current salary, but low ball my expected salary. I much prefer to give an expected salary (of about 10-15% more of my actual expected) than my current salary. With the availability of Glassdoor and old-fashioned networking, it's really not hard to figure out market prices (at least for software engineers) in an area and company type. I've tried to follow some of the advice of avoiding/deflecting the salary question, and I think it generally is a poor substitute for being well-informed. It also makes for some extremely awkward conversations when it comes time to negotiate. Maybe it's a personality thing, but I would rather set the upper bound and let them try to negotiate me down rather than letting them set the lower bound and try to negotiate them up.