There are certain questions in recruitment that have become so routine that we rarely stop to question whether they still make sense. One of them is perhaps the most frequently asked question in hiring: “What is your current CTC and what are your expectations?” It sounds simple. It sounds logical. It sounds like an efficient way to understand whether a candidate fits within the organisation’s compensation budget.
But perhaps we have been oversimplifying something that is far more complicated. The problem is not that recruiters want to understand a candidate’s compensation. That is perfectly reasonable. The problem is that CTC is often treated as though it is a standardised unit of measurement, capable of telling us what a candidate is currently worth and what their next compensation should be. It isn’t.
In fact, CTC itself is not consistently defined across organisations. One company may include gratuity in CTC, while another may not. One may include the employer’s PF contribution; another may present it separately. One may...
