How Swiss Startup Association built its entire team through one hiring tool

At a Glance

A nonprofit with 1,900 members, seven-person team and zero recruiters

The Swiss Startup Association is the national voice of Switzerland’s startup ecosystem, representing 1,900 members through political advocacy and 150+ annual events. With a seven-person team, no dedicated recruiter, and a non-profit budget, they needed a hiring channel that could fill every role, from CEO to volunteer, without draining time or money. Since joining JOIN in 2020, they have recruited every single full-time team member through JOIN.

The Challenge

Hiring from scratch: no budget, no recruiter, no room for chaos

When Raphael Tobler took over as President of the Swiss Startup Association in 2020, the organisation was in full relaunch mode. New mission, new team, new ambitions, and zero dedicated hiring infrastructure. Everything needed to be built from scratch, starting with the people. But in the years before JOIN, hiring felt like a second job in itself.

The problem was not a lack of candidates. It was a lack of time, budget, and reach. The association operates across all four Swiss language regions. And as a non-profit, they needed to think twice before spending every penny.

• Expensive job platforms delivering poor results: Before choosing JOIN, Raphael relied on traditional Swiss job platforms, and the costs were extremely high. “We’d pay 1,000 or 2,000 francs to post a single role,” he recalled. “The price was high, but the value just wasn’t there.” For a growing company operating with a lean budget, that equation didn’t hold.

• Hours lost managing job ads across multiple portals: The alternative to expensive platforms was posting the same role in multiple places manually. “I don’t have the bandwidth to manage ten different portals,” he said. The scattered approach also made it nearly impossible to maintain a clear view of all candidates in one place. Applications arrived through different channels, decisions stalled, and the hiring process became a drag on his time rather than a tool for building the team.

• Rigid listing limits disrupting ongoing recruitment: Other platforms imposed 30-day caps on job listings, which was a dealbreaker for roles like internships and ongoing programme support staff that needed to stay open continuously. “On other platforms, listings would expire after 30 days regardless of whether the role was filled. Every expiry meant re-drafting, re-posting, and restarting the clock. I’d set up a listing, and then it would just stop,” Raphael said.

• Unqualified applications consuming the time: When Raphael reviewed applications himself, he needed the pile in front of him to mean something. Wading through candidates who didn’t speak the required languages, had no relevant background, or clearly hadn’t read the job description was a tax on his most limited resource. There was no mechanism to filter anyone out before they landed in his inbox.

• Chaotic hiring tools that nobody wanted to learn: Previous tools were unintuitive and overloaded with features nobody used. “There are other hiring tools where I just have chaos and I don’t understand what, how, where. I find that very unproductive,” Raphael said.

“A hiring tool has to run as quickly, simply, and uncomplicatedly as possible. That’s the whole point.”

Raphael Tobler

President, Swiss Startup Association

The Solution

How JOIN became the only hiring tool they’ll ever need

Raphael discovered JOIN in 2020 and has never looked elsewhere since. In the hunt for a hiring platform that simply works, Raphael made a decisive call: JOIN would be the only place that he and his team would use to publish jobs and manage candidates. No email applications. No LinkedIn messages. No exceptions.

One platform replaced a fragmented, expensive recruitment stack

Instead of juggling multiple job portals, Raphael posts each role once on JOIN and relies on its multiposting to distribute listings across job boards automatically. He does not need to check which boards receive the listing. He does not need to manage separate logins. “I post a role once and trust the job distribution to work,” he said. This has eliminated the four-figure posting fees entirely.

Job templates and flexible listings kept hiring running year-round

JOIN’s job editor changed how Raphael thinks about recurring hires. Instead of building every posting from scratch, he copies a previous listing, adjusts the details, and publishes, cutting setup time to around ten minutes per posting. And because JOIN does not impose time limits on listings, roles like recurring internships stay live indefinitely. “If I need an intern, I can have a listing live in ten minutes and know that the right applications will come in,” he said.

Pre-screening questions that filter out unsuitable candidates

Screening questions gave Raphael a way to apply filter logic before he needed to view applications manually. Language requirements, salary expectations, relevant experience, and candidates who don’t meet the baseline are filtered out automatically. “If someone applies and can’t meet a basic requirement, they’re gone before they reach me,” he explained. “That’s what efficiency actually looks like.” It keeps the candidate pool lean and the review process focused. Raphael can give real attention to the right people, rather than skimming past dozens of mismatches.

Simple interface that needs no additional tech onboarding

The SSA team members use JOIN independently to manage their own hires. No complaints surfaced, and no training was needed to publish their first roles. “It’s intuitive. I put the listing together, publish it, and applications start coming in,” Raphael said. The platform’s modern, minimal design meant that even team members with no recruiting background could run a hiring process end to end.

The Results

90% lower hiring costs. 56 roles posted. Every full-time hire made through JOIN.

Five years and 50 job listings later, the Swiss Startup Association runs all hiring through a single platform and every full-time team member on staff was recruited through it.

• Every hire, every role, every level, through one platform: From the CEO succession search to event managers, communications leads, and recurring interns, the SSA has never filled a role outside of JOIN. Raphael is direct: “I’m 100% certain that every single hire came through JOIN.”

• Consistent inbound without a single paid listing: Across multiple job postings over the years, the SSA has not had to promote job ads to increase reach. JOIN’s organic distribution delivered strong candidate volumes for every role; the first listing alone attracted 189 applications within two weeks.

• Leadership time protected: With pre-screening handling the first pass, Raphael reviews only the candidates worth reviewing. A pool of hundreds becomes a focused shortlist without a single hour of manual triage.

“If JOIN disappeared tomorrow? I’d miss the simplicity. With any other tool, I would have had to invest double the time.”

Raphael Tobler

President, Swiss Startup Association

Beyond the numbers, JOIN changed how Raphael thinks about recruitment as a founder. He no longer treats hiring as a cost centre or a distraction. That confidence has extended beyond the SSA: Raphael now uses JOIN across all three organisations he runs and has recommended it to more than ten others.

The Swiss Startup Association has been building its team through a single platform since 2020. This is proof that effective recruiting doesn’t require a big budget, a dedicated recruiter, or a complicated stack of HR tools.

“I wrote to the JOIN founder on LinkedIn just to tell him what an amazing platform this is. I’ve already recommended it to ten others.”

Raphael Tobler

President, Swiss Startup Association

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