Part of the job of employer branding is helping an organization change. Commonly, it starts by helping recruiting change, and if you've ever tried, you know the first response is "how can we make that change when we don't have [insert thing]?" Which is why I was really impressed by Coby Schneider's article on how to respond to that exact issue. For whatever reason (I blame its proximity to HR, personally), recruiting likes to have all its ducks in a row before taking step one. But you are going to need to encourage them to shake that mentality.

"Ryanair’s success is remarkably simple. It understands people, and what drives their decision making, better than almost any other company on the planet."

I'm already on record (what record??!?!) for the power of embracing constraints. When you have no resources or money or time, that's when you are forced to get really creative in solving your problems (even employer branding ones). So here's the HBR talking how innovation doesn't occur despite constraints, but because of them. Sure, if you want to play "follow the leader" and "best practice bingo," you'll pay a premium to do it the way everyone else does. So embrace those constraints (or even apply some arbitrary ones) to innovate better.