How to Win Top Talent When You Can’t Pay Top Dollar
The unspoken reality in today’s employment marketplace is that compensation hikes have flattened, but candidate’s expectations haven’t.
Companies want high performers. Candidates want meaningful work, stability, and leaders they can trust, and a salary bump. The challenge is that not every organization can continually raise pay to stay competitive.
The good news is that compensation is only one factor. A trend we see over and over again is candidates choosing the totality of the package, not just the offer with the higher number. But we have to work on creating the total package that attracts the best candidate.
Below are five levers leaders can pull to attract top talent when compensation is not the main differentiator:
1. Tell a clearer, stronger story about the role.
Top candidates care deeply about impact. They want to know:
What problem am I actually being hired to solve?
What does success look like in the first 6–12 months?
How does this role matter to the business?
When leaders communicate this clearly, not buried in a long job description, but in simple, energizing language, it stands out. Candidates choose clarity over confusion.
Tip: Open your conversation with the “why” behind the role, not the responsibilities.
2. Highlight leadership quality: people follow people.
Pay may get someone interested. Leadership keeps them in the process.
What we see consistently at Forge is that candidates don’t turn down jobs because of pay nearly as often as they turn them down because the leadership feels unclear, scattered, or unintentional.
Show them:
how you lead
how you make decisions
how you develop people
how you communicate under pressure
This is often the deciding factor for A-players.
3. Make your culture tangible, not theoretical.
Everyone says they have a strong culture, but few companies can articulate it in a way that feels real. Help candidates picture themselves on your team by sharing:
how you collaborate
what “high performance” looks like
how conflict is handled
what pace they can expect
what the team is proud of
Candidates are far more likely to accept a slightly lower offer if they can feel the environment they’re stepping into. It’s often easiest to do this with a lunch or happy hour . . . something outside the office walls.
4. Emphasize growth that’s actually accessible.
“Growth opportunity” is one of the most overused but underdefined phrases in hiring.
Give candidates specifics on how they will gain:
exposure to strategic work
mentorship from senior leaders
opportunity to work on cross-functional projects
a path to new responsibilities
skill development that matters in their career
The truth is, if a candidate sees a path to becoming more valuable in the market, they’ll often take the role that invests in them.
5. Run a clean, fast, confident hiring process.
Speed is one of the most underrated competitive advantages in this market.
A well-run process signals:
decisiveness
alignment
respect
momentum
A slow process signals the opposite — even if that’s not true.
We’ve seen clients win candidates $10–20K below competing offers simply because they moved with clarity and purpose. Candidates want to feel wanted, not like they’re one of twenty options.
The bottom line:
You may not be able to outspend your competitors — but you can absolutely out-clarify, out-lead, out-culture, and out-execute them. Most people will not spend the time or the energy to work on these elements that attract the people that will make your business more successful and more strategic.
“Execution eats strategy for breakfast,” and here is where you can execute with excellence.
So in summary, top talent is drawn to organizations where:
expectations are clear
leadership is strong
the work is meaningful
growth is visible
the hiring journey earns their trust
Compensation matters, of course. But it’s rarely the whole story.
And for organizations willing to focus on the parts of hiring that money can’t buy? They often end up attracting the very talent they thought they couldn’t afford.