Not every company can pay top of market, and the salaries up there keep climbing. That doesn't mean you can't hire great people. It means you have to win them on something other than money.

These are the tactics we'd use

Offer fully remote

Fully remote is what a lot of people want, and it's quietly disappeared from the market. Almost everyone's been dragged back to the office. If you can still offer it, you stand out straight away, and you can hire from anywhere in the country instead of commuting distance. That pulls in strong people who'd otherwise be out of reach.

Offer four days or real flexibility

Plenty of good people, parents especially, will take less money for a schedule that fits their life. A four-day week or genuine flexibility is something you can put on the table instead of a bigger salary. For a lot of people it's worth more than the cash.

Interview in two weeks, not two months

Most hiring drags on for a month or more. Multiple rounds, long gaps between them, a take-home sat in someone's inbox for a fortnight. While that's happening, the good people are interviewing elsewhere, and they don't stay on the market long. Two weeks from CV to offer is enough time to make a proper decision, and it's fast enough that you're often the first real offer on the table, ahead of the slower companies chasing the same person.

Cut your must-have list in half

Write down everything you want for the role. Then be honest about how many are genuinely essential on day one. Usually it's about half.
Screen for the essential half, and treat the rest as things you'll train someone up in. You get a bigger pool to choose from, and the training becomes a reason to join rather than a box they had to tick before applying.

Use a recruiter to find the ones the market's priced wrong

Some of the best hires are people the market has undervalued: strong candidates sitting between the obvious keywords, or ones who don't sell themselves well on paper. Finding them before anyone else does is the job. A good recruiter spends their time spotting the value other people walk past.

None of this is underpaying people. It's accepting you won't win on salary, so you win on everything else. Do that and you'll out-hire companies with more money and slower processes than you.