Employer branding for startups with no budget: what candidates actually look at

You message an engineer who is exactly what you’re looking for. She reads it and doesn’t reply. Three days later, still nothing. Chances are she didn’t ignore you. She did what almost everyone does: spent five minutes looking your company up and decided, based on what she found, that it wasn’t worth answering.

That’s your employer brand. When we talk to founders about employer branding, many immediately think of videos, nice offices and social campaigns, and since there’s no budget for any of that, they park it. But the brand exists whether you look after it or not. And the things that shape it most cost very little money. Mostly, they cost attention.

Those five minutes of research

Put yourself in the shoes of a strong tech or business candidate who has just received your message. Before replying, they’ll usually do something like this:

1. Visit your website to understand what you do and who for.
2. Look up the founders and whoever would be their direct manager.
3. See who already works for you and how long they’ve stayed.
4. Read reviews on job sites, if there are any.
5. For technical roles, have a look at your stack, the engineering blog or a public repo.
6. Ask someone they know who has worked with you or near you.

None of this needs a big investment. Any of it can win or lose you that person.

Your careers page and your job ads

Your careers page doesn’t have to impress anyone. It has to answer, in plain language, what a candidate is wondering: what the company does, where it is right now (team size, funding if it’s public, what’s coming next), what day-to-day work looks like, who’s on the team and what you genuinely offer. Names and faces help, and so do concrete benefits instead of “great culture” and “fruit in the office”.

You don’t need to hide what you can’t offer either. An early-stage startup can’t promise the stability of a large company, and anyone reading your site knows that. What you can offer is autonomy and the feeling that their work actually shows. Say that clearly and you’ll attract the people who want exactly that.

Job ads are much the same. Too many are a list of requirements any company could have written. What we usually suggest is opening with the problem the person will solve and leaving the tech list for later, separating the must-haves from the nice-to-haves, and explaining the process: how many stages, roughly how long it takes and who they’ll meet.

And include the salary range. Candidates look for it, and it saves you conversations that were never going anywhere. On top of that, the EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970), which member states had to transpose by June 2026, strengthens candidates’ right to know the starting pay or its range. For what applies to you specifically, an employment lawyer is the right person to ask.

In a startup, the founders are the brand

At a twenty-person company, what a candidate really wants to know is who they’ll be working with and whether they believe in what you’re building. That’s why your own professional profile, and your leadership team’s, matter more than any corporate page.

You don’t have to post every week or turn into a content creator. It’s enough to share now and then what you’re working on or what you’ve learned along the way, and to make sure your profile isn’t stuck on the job you had three years ago. If you’re invited to speak at a meetup or on an industry podcast and it makes sense, go. We often see candidates turn up to a first interview having heard the CEO speak somewhere, and it changes the tone of the conversation from the start.

How you treat people during the process

This is what people remember, far more than your website. And they talk about it.

Always replying, including to people who don’t move forward, sounds obvious, yet it’s the first thing to slip when the team is busy. Keeping to the timelines you give, or letting people know when they change. Making sure whoever runs the interview has read the CV beforehand. And giving feedback that’s actually useful, especially to someone who reached the final stages and just missed out.

More than once we’ve seen a rejected finalist come back to the same company a year later, or refer a friend. That only happens if they left with a good impression.

What your team says about you

Nobody is more credible than the people who already work with you. Inviting a team member to an informal chat with finalists often works better than any pitch. Sharing real stories from time to time, like a project that went well or an internal promotion, helps too. And if you encourage people to refer candidates, thank them when they do.

Listen to what people say when they leave, as well. If leavers keep giving the same reasons, that’s already part of your brand, even if it isn’t written down anywhere.

Only promise what’s real

The most damaging mistake is also the easiest to avoid: selling something that isn’t there. If your careers page talks about flexibility and the first week turns out to be five days in the office, trust breaks straight away and that hire often ends in an early exit. A more modest brand that’s true works much better over time.

One last thing that’s easy to overlook: if you work with a recruitment partner, that person is your brand every time they call a candidate. That’s why, when we start working with a startup, we take time to understand its story properly before telling it to anyone. If you’d like us to take a look at how candidates see you today, get in touch.