If you're hiring your first few employees and you don't have a recruiter, an ATS subscription, or a dedicated HR person, you don't need one to run a real hiring process. The tools below cover sourcing, screening, scheduling, and paperwork, all free or cheap enough that cost isn't the reason you'd skip a step. Here are 10 worth setting up before you post your first job.
1. WellHired for sourcing and shortlisting
Most general job boards weren't built for product and tech hiring, so you end up wading through irrelevant applications to find the two or three worth a call. WellHired is built specifically for product and tech roles, and its AI-assisted matching narrows a stack of applicants down to a shortlist without you needing to screen every resume by hand. There's no HR team or recruiter required to run it: you post the role, verified candidates apply, and you get a ranked shortlist instead of a raw inbox. For a first technical or product hire, that alone can save the hours a founder usually loses to manual screening, a tradeoff we've broken down in more detail when comparing AI-assisted screening to manual resume review.
2. Google Sheets as a lightweight applicant tracker
You don't need a paid ATS for your first few hires. A shared Google Sheet with columns for candidate name, source, stage, and next action does the job for a founder tracking under 50 applicants at a time. Add a simple color code for stage (applied, screened, interviewing, offer) and it works as well as software costing hundreds a month, at least until your hiring volume outgrows a spreadsheet.
3. Google Forms for structured screening questions
Before you get on a call with anyone, a short Google Form with three or four screening questions, expected salary range, notice period, one skills question, filters out mismatches for free. It also forces you to decide upfront what actually matters for the role, which is worth doing regardless of what tools you use.
4. Calendly's free tier for scheduling
The back-and-forth of finding interview times eats real time when you're doing hiring yourself alongside everything else. Calendly's free plan lets you share a booking link with one calendar connected, which is enough for a founder running interviews solo. It removes a step that otherwise adds days to your time-to-hire without costing anything.
5. LinkedIn's organic reach for early outreach
You don't need LinkedIn Recruiter to get your first post in front of people. A well-written post about the role, shared from your personal profile and reshared by a few early employees or advisors, can surface candidates you'd never find by posting alone. It's slower and less targeted than a paid tool built for product and tech hiring, which is why we've compared the cost of a first engineering hire through LinkedIn Recruiter versus WellHired in more detail, but the free version of LinkedIn is still worth using as one channel among several.
6. Wellfound for startup-specific listings
If you're hiring for an early-stage team, Wellfound (formerly AngelList Talent) reaches candidates who are already looking for startup roles specifically, rather than general job seekers. Listing is inexpensive relative to paying an agency, and the audience skews toward people comfortable with the ambiguity of an early team. It works best as one source among several rather than your only channel.
7. Loom for async video screening
Instead of a 20-minute intro call with every applicant, ask candidates to record a 3-minute Loom answering two or three questions about their background and the role. It's free to use, saves you real calendar time, and gives you a much better read on communication style than a resume alone. It also lets you screen candidates on your own schedule instead of theirs.
8. A free scheduling-friendly video tool for interviews
Google Meet and Zoom's free tiers cover everything a founder needs for early-stage interviews: screen sharing for technical rounds, recording for later review, and enough call length for most single interviews. There's no reason to pay for a video tool at this stage unless you're running long panel interviews regularly.
9. HelloSign or DocuSign's free tier for offer letters
Once you've made a decision, don't let paperwork slow you down. Free tiers on e-signature tools let you send an offer letter or contract and get it signed same-day, which matters because a slow offer process is one of the easiest ways to lose a candidate to a faster-moving company. This is also where a lot of founders lose candidates without realizing it: the hire was effectively made, but the offer sat unsigned for a week.
10. Notion for a lightweight hiring pipeline
If a spreadsheet feels too flat, a free Notion workspace can hold your job description drafts, interview scorecards, and candidate notes in one place that's easy to share with a co-founder. It's not a replacement for a real sourcing tool, but as a shared source of truth for a two- or three-person hiring team, it's hard to beat for the price.
Putting it together without a recruiter or HR team
None of these tools require hiring expertise to use well. What they do require is picking one for each stage (sourcing, screening, scheduling, paperwork) and actually using it consistently, rather than switching approaches every time you hire. A founder running this stack end-to-end, sourcing candidates on a platform built for product and tech roles, screening async with Loom, scheduling with Calendly, and closing with e-signature, can run a full hiring process without ever opening a recruiter's invoice. If sourcing and shortlisting is the piece eating the most of your week, that's usually the one worth solving first; you can see how the cost compares to other routes founders take in our breakdown of what founders actually save per hire versus a recruiting agency.
When you're ready to post a role, get started on WellHired and see the shortlist before you commit to anything.
FAQ
Do I really not need an ATS for my first hires?
For a handful of open roles and under a few dozen applicants at a time, a shared spreadsheet or a Notion board works fine. Paid ATS software starts earning its cost once you're managing multiple roles at volume, not before.
What's the cheapest way to screen candidates before an interview?
A short screening form for basic fit, followed by an async video question through a free tool like Loom, filters out mismatches without costing anything or eating your calendar time.
Is a free job board post enough to find good candidates?
It can surface some candidates, but general boards aren't built for product and tech hiring specifically, so you'll likely see more volume than relevance. Platforms built for these roles typically produce a shorter, more relevant shortlist for the same effort.
How many tools do I actually need to run a real hiring process?
Fewer than most founders assume: one for sourcing and screening, one for scheduling, and one for paperwork covers the whole pipeline. Adding more tools than that usually slows things down rather than speeding them up.
At what point should I stop using free tools and pay for something?
When the time you're spending manually screening or coordinating starts costing you more than a modest paid tool would, that's usually the signal. For most founders, sourcing and shortlisting is the first place that tradeoff shows up.