How to Attract Great Talent Before You Have a Big Brand

Why should someone want to work here?

A candidate gets a message from your recruiter about an opportunity.

They have never heard of your company.

They search your name, look at your website, read the job description, maybe look at a few employees on LinkedIn, and then decide whether this opportunity is even worth a conversation.

This is the reality for a lot of growing companies.

You may be doing great work, have strong leadership, meaningful problems to solve, and a real opportunity for someone to make an impact. But if candidates cannot understand that from the outside, you are asking them to take a leap of faith.

After more than 10 years recruiting across startups, venture capital, fintech, and the agency side, I’ve worked with companies that have household names and companies most candidates had never heard of.

When you do not have brand recognition working in your favor, you have to be much more intentional about answering a very basic question:

Why should someone want to work here?

Start with what is actually true

Before you try to make the company sound exciting, figure out what is actually compelling about the opportunity.

• →What will this person get to build?
• →What problems will they solve?
• →Who will they work with and learn from?
• →How much ownership will they have?
• →What impact can they realistically make?
• →Why does the work matter?

Growing companies sometimes feel like they have to compete with larger businesses on everything at once. Compensation, benefits, perks, brand recognition, office space, titles.

You may not win on every one of those things.

That is okay.

Your goal should be to understand what is genuinely different or valuable about working at your company and communicate that clearly.

For a startup, maybe someone will own something much earlier in their career than they would at a larger company. Maybe they will work directly with the founder or executive team. Maybe they will build a function from scratch. Maybe the company is solving a problem they genuinely care about.

Whatever it is, be specific.

“Fast-paced environment with lots of growth opportunities” could describe almost any startup.

“Come build our first enterprise implementation function and work directly with the COO as we grow from five customers to 25” tells someone what the opportunity actually is.

That is a much stronger story.

Your job description is part of your employer brand

The job description may be the first meaningful interaction someone has with your company.

Treat it that way.

Candidates should be able to understand what they are being hired to do, what they will own, what skills actually matter, and what success in the role looks like.

This is one reason I recommend being disciplined about job requirements.

If you add every possible preferred qualification to a job description, you can quickly create a role that feels unrealistic or confusing.

If you need someone with five core capabilities, say that clearly.

I also recommend giving candidates enough context to understand why the role exists.

• →Are you hiring because the company is growing?
• →Is this a replacement?
• →Is this a new function?
• →What problem is this person being brought in to solve?

You do not need to write a novel in the job description, but you should give someone enough information to understand why this role matters to the business.

That helps the right candidates see themselves in the opportunity.

Give candidates the context they actually care about

Candidates should not have to piece together the company story across five different interviews.

I recommend giving them context early.

Explain where the company is today, where you are trying to go, why this role matters, and what challenges the person will be walking into.

And be honest about the challenges.

Employer branding does not mean making everything sound perfect.

If the person is inheriting a process that needs to be rebuilt, tell them.

If the company is growing quickly and priorities change often, tell them.

If they will need to influence a team that has historically worked a certain way, tell them.

The right candidate may actually be more interested because of the challenge.

I’ve found that experienced candidates usually know there is no perfect company or perfect role. What they want is enough information to make an informed decision about whether the problems you have are problems they actually want to solve.

That honesty also builds trust.

You do not want someone joining because you sold them one version of the role and then discovering something completely different in their first month.

Make sure the interview process matches the message

You can have a great website, a strong careers page, and beautiful employer branding content and still create a poor impression during the hiring process.

Candidates pay attention to how you operate.

If you tell them the company moves quickly but it takes three weeks to schedule the next interview, they notice.

If you talk about communication being important but no one follows up with them, they notice.

If you describe the culture as highly collaborative but every interviewer gives them a completely different explanation of how the team works, they notice.

Your hiring process gives candidates a preview of what working at the company may feel like.

That does not mean every process needs to move in three days.

It means you should set expectations and communicate.

If the process is going to take three weeks, tell them.

If an executive is traveling and the next interview will take a little longer to schedule, tell them.

If the team needs a few days to make a decision, tell them.

Silence is where candidates start making their own assumptions.

This becomes even more important when you are competing for people who have other options.

Give your interviewers a consistent story

Everyone involved in the interview process does not need to sound scripted.

Actually, I would recommend the opposite.

Candidates should get to meet real people and hear different perspectives about the company.

But your interview team should still understand the basic story.

• →Why does this role exist?
• →Why should someone join?
• →What will they get to own?
• →What are the challenges?
• →Where is the company going?
• →What does success look like?

If one interviewer tells the candidate the role will have significant autonomy and another says every decision needs executive approval, you have now created confusion.

The same applies to company direction.

If candidates hear completely different answers about priorities, growth plans, or what the role is supposed to accomplish, they may start questioning whether the leadership team is aligned.

This is another reason I recommend doing a search kickoff before the role opens.

You are aligning the team on what you are looking for, but you should also align on what you are communicating to the market.

Your recruiter should be able to tell the story

Recruiters are often the first actual person a candidate speaks with from your company.

That means they need enough context to represent the opportunity well.

A recruiter should be able to explain why the company is hiring, what the person will own, what the team looks like, what the major challenges are, and why the opportunity may be interesting to the type of candidate you are targeting.

This matters even more in outbound recruiting.

If you are reaching out to someone who is already employed and not actively looking, the message has to give them a reason to stop what they are doing and pay attention.

“Your background looks like a great fit for an exciting opportunity” does not tell them much.

Tell them why you reached out.

Maybe they have experience scaling a payments platform and you need someone to help build yours.

Maybe they have spent five years selling into the exact market your company is entering.

Maybe they have led a function from zero to one and you need someone to do that again.

Specific outreach makes the opportunity feel intentional.

It also signals to the candidate that someone actually took the time to understand why their experience may be relevant.

Remember that candidates are interviewing you too

One thing companies sometimes forget during the hiring process is that the candidate is also collecting information.

You are deciding whether you want to hire them.

They are deciding whether they want to join you.

Strong candidates usually have options.

They are paying attention to the questions your interviewers ask, how prepared people seem, how employees talk about leadership, whether people appear excited about the work, and how clearly everyone can explain the direction of the business.

Candidates also notice whether they have space to ask their own questions.

I always recommend leaving time for that.

If you spend an entire interview assessing someone and leave them two minutes at the end to ask questions, you have missed an opportunity to help them understand the company and the role.

Good candidates are usually trying to answer their own set of questions.

• →Can I learn here?
• →Do I trust this manager?
• →Will I have the ownership I want?
• →Does this business have a direction I believe in?
• →Are the problems interesting enough for me to leave my current job?

Give them enough information to answer those questions.

You do not need to appeal to everyone

One of the biggest mistakes I see companies make with employer branding is trying to make the company attractive to every candidate.

That should not be the goal.

Some people want structure, mature processes, and clearly defined responsibilities.

Others want to join early, work through ambiguity, and build those processes themselves.

Neither person is wrong.

But they may not both be right for your company.

The more honest you are about what the environment is actually like, the easier it becomes for the right people to opt in and the wrong people to opt out.

That is a good thing.

You want candidates joining because the reality of the opportunity aligns with what they are looking for, not because you managed to make everything sound appealing during the interview process.

Start with your next open role

You do not need a massive employer branding strategy to start improving how candidates experience your company.

Start with your next open role.

Ask yourself:

• →Why would a strong candidate want this job?
• →What will they get to own or build?
• →What makes this opportunity different?
• →What challenges should we be honest about?
• →Is that story clear in the job description?
• →Can our recruiter explain it?
• →Are interviewers aligned on what we are telling candidates?
• →Does our actual interview process reflect how we say the company operates?

Then go through the hiring process from the candidate’s perspective.

Look at the outreach they receive. Read the job description. Review the interview process. Think about the questions they are likely asking themselves after every conversation.

You do not need to have the biggest brand in the market to attract great people.

You need to give the right people enough clarity to understand why joining your company could be the right next move for them.

Your employer brand is what candidates experience throughout the hiring process. Make sure the experience matches the company you are asking them to join.

Explore Fresno Summit Advisors’ free hiring resources and guides for practical tools built from more than a decade of recruiting experience. If your team needs help improving how you attract, assess, or hire talent, get in touch or email info@fresnosummit.com and we’ll help point you in the right direction.