How to find third or nᵗʰ maximum salary from salary table?

Question

How to find third or n^th maximum salary from salary table(EmpID, EmpName, EmpSalary) in optimized way?

Answer 1

Method 1:

SELECT TOP 1 salary FROM (
SELECT TOP 3 salary 
 FROM employees 
  ORDER BY salary DESC) AS emp 
 ORDER BY salary ASC

Method 2:

  Select EmpName,salary from
  (
    select EmpName,salary ,Row_Number() over(order by salary desc) as rowid      
     from EmpTbl)
   as a where rowid=3