How to Hire on CanvasedIn: Step-by-Step Guide for Recruiters

Looking to hire professionals who aren't actively browsing job boards? CanvasedIn works the opposite way round from a traditional job site. Instead of posting a role and waiting for applications, you search professionals' Canvases and reach out directly to the people who fit.

This guide walks you through the full process, from creating your account to making your first hire.

What is CanvasedIn?

CanvasedIn is a hiring marketplace where professionals publish a Canvas instead of a résumé: specific pieces of work with their outcomes, and skills backed by evidence. A skill can be linked to the work it was used in, vouched for by a named colleague, or assessed on CanvasedIn. Each professional controls who can find them.

Companies don't post jobs into a black box. You search, find a specific person, and send a considered, structured interest request with the role, pay range and evaluation plan attached upfront. Signing up, searching, shortlisting and sending interest requests are free.

How to Hire on CanvasedIn

Step 1: Create your company account

1. 1Go to canvasedin.com, choose Sign up, and pick I'm a Company Recruiter.
2. 2Enter your company name and your company email domain, then confirm your email address.
3. 3Wait for verification. The CanvasedIn team reviews every new company manually, using your company domain. Until then, search shows Verification pending, while your dashboard, team and roles already work. Signing up with your company email rather than a personal address makes the review quicker.
4. 4Add your recruiting team. From Team, an admin adds seats and invites colleagues by email. Each seat has its own login and its own monthly request quota. Three seats are included free.

There's no card required to create an account.

Step 2: Define your open role

1. 1Open Roles and choose New template. If you already have a job description, you can draft or upload it there and convert it into a template.
2. 2Fill in the title, role context, function and industry, seniority, compensation range, and your evaluation plan: the format and the time you'll ask for.
3. 3Keep the plan realistic. Every professional sets their own evaluation terms (the most time they'll spend, the formats they accept, whether they do unpaid work samples), shown on their Canvas as How I evaluate. Once they accept, their terms bind the Eval Room, so a brief that goes beyond them is blocked.
4. 4Save the template. You'll use it for every professional you approach for this opening. Set it as your active role and search, requests and your pipeline pre-fill from it.

Step 3: Search and reach out

1. 1Search by function first, then industry, and narrow by skills, experience, location, compensation and availability. Each result explains why it matched. For credential-based roles such as nursing or warehouse work, use the separate frontline search.
2. 2Open a Canvas. Read the work items (what made the work hard, what the professional did, what changed) and the evidence behind each skill: Used in [work item], Vouched by [name], or Assessed [month year]. Check their How I evaluate terms before you write.
3. 3Send an interest request from your role template, with a Why this professional? note written fresh for that person (25–500 characters). CanvasedIn blocks notes that closely repeat one you sent recently, and notes that could have been sent to anyone, so mention something specific from their Canvas.
4. 4Spend requests carefully. Each seat gets 20 requests a month, reset on the 1st, and declines don't refund. You also can't contact someone a colleague already has an active request with, or who declined your company in the last 90 days. A blocked attempt doesn't use your quota.
5. 5The professional has 7 days to accept or decline.

Step 4: Run the Eval Room, then hire

1. 1If the professional accepts, an Eval Room opens on the terms they set. You have 72 hours to send a brief, or the room closes.
2. 2The professional responds within their response window.
3. 3You owe structured written feedback (at least 100 characters) within 5 days of their response. Missed feedback counts against your company's trust score, which professionals see before they respond to you.
4. 4Record the outcome: an offer extended, or not a match. Either way, the professional gets a clear answer.

What's Different from a Traditional Job Posting

Conclusion

Hiring on CanvasedIn looks different from posting a job because it solves a different problem: reaching professionals who aren't scrolling job boards, and showing them, through the quota, the trust score and the Eval Room, that your outreach is worth their time. Create your account, define your role once, search with precision, and follow through.

FAQs