Why startups need a real careers page

Early-stage startups usually hire through networks, and many teams post roles only on job boards or a shared doc. That works until you are competing for engineers, designers or sales leads who are comparing three offers. Candidates research you the way customers do: they read your homepage, check your product, look for the team, and then look for a page that explains what working there is like. If that page is missing or thin, you look less established than you are.

A careers page also does quiet work for the rest of the business. Investors and customers see it as a sign of momentum, and a clear description of how you work helps the right people self-select, which saves interview time.

What to include on a startup careers page

Keep it to one scrolling page with a separate page for each role.

1. Mission in one sentence. What you are building and why it matters, in plain words. Reuse the clarity of your homepage headline.
2. Stage and backing. Founded year, team size and stage, stated factually. Only name investors if you have announced them.
3. How you work. Remote, hybrid or office; time zones; meeting culture; how decisions get made.
4. The team. Photos and short bios help, but only with each person's consent. Many startups show the team as a group or by role instead.
5. Benefits and pay approach. What you offer, how you set pay and whether you share ranges on every listing.
6. Hiring process. The steps, roughly how long each takes and who candidates will meet.
7. Open roles. Filterable by team and location once you have more than a handful.
8. A "general application" option. Useful at the stage when great people arrive before you have written the role.

Pay transparency: plan the template for ranges

Even if you are not legally required to post pay everywhere yet, design your job template with a pay range field. Rules are spreading, and candidates increasingly expect it.

United States

Pay range rules are set state by state and sometimes city by city. Brightmine's state and local tracker lists posting requirements in states including California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Washington, plus cities such as New York City and Jersey City. Thresholds differ: New York's applies to employers with four or more employees, Washington's to 15 or more. The tracker also lists Connecticut's requirement from 1 October 2026 and Delaware's from 26 September 2027.

Remote roles are the tricky part. The tracker notes, for example, that New York's rule covers roles performed at least partly in New York or reporting to a New York-based office, supervisor or work site. If you hire remotely across the US, many teams simply include a range on every listing.

European Union

The EU Pay Transparency Directive requires that applicants receive the starting pay or pay range early enough to negotiate, and bars employers from asking about pay history. According to Lewis Silkin's July 2026 update, member states had to transpose the Directive by 7 June 2026, but only a handful (Italy, Lithuania, Malta and Slovakia) had fully done so, with most others delayed or partway through. That means the exact rules depend on the country and may still be changing.

Confirm requirements with an employment lawyer for each country and state you hire in. The website's job is to make compliant listings easy to publish.

Getting roles into Google's job search

Google can show listings in its job search experience when pages carry JobPosting structured data. Google's documentation lists required properties (datePosted, description, hiringOrganization, jobLocation and title) and sets some important rules:

• Use the markup only on a page that contains a single job posting, not on your listing page.
• Remove expired jobs or set validThrough to a past date; expired postings are not allowed.
• Keep the title to the job title only, without salary, dates or the company name.
• For fully remote roles, set jobLocationType to TELECOMMUTE, say it is 100% remote in the description and add applicantLocationRequirements with at least one country.

Most applicant tracking systems can output this markup on hosted job pages. If you embed roles into your own site, check whether the markup survives. Our startup SEO plan covers the rest of your early search setup.

Make applying fast

• Ask only for what you will actually read at the first stage: name, email, a CV or profile link and one or two role-specific questions.
• Let people apply on mobile without creating an account.
• Confirm receipt immediately and say when they will hear back.
• Make the form accessible: labelled fields, clear errors, keyboard-friendly upload buttons.
• Link your privacy notice and explain how long you keep applications.

Careers page launch checklist

If you are building the whole site at once, our Startup Launchpad covers careers, product and trust pages together.

Frequently asked questions