Text Your Way To Your Next Job

Aman Brar, the Indianapolis businessman, had a thought. Phone calls were becoming less relevant to Millennials and Gen X’ers. Social media and various chat platforms have taken over the way people communicate, both inside and outside the business world. So why not use them to hook the right person up with the right job?
This inspiration led to Canvas, an app that officially launches today and is being touted as the world’s first text-based interviewing platform. Available for both desktop and mobile app use on iOS and Android, it offers recruiters and candidates the ability to complete the first step of the hiring process—such as conducting interviews—via text, rather than a phone call. The idea is that this creates a hiring process that’s both faster and more convenient for everyone involved. The app was created by Brar, former director and vice president of business development for ChaCha and former president of Apparatus, along with fellow Apparatus alums Kelly Lavin and Jared Adams.
Brar just didn’t think phone calls were the best way to gauge talent anymore. Given that billions of texts are sent every day, he sees Canvas as a way to meet candidates where they are, by using a form of communication they’re comfortable with.
“Look at the dating world,” he says. “Imagine if you were to contact everybody that you were interested in on Match.com via phone call. The thought was, if a text-based conversation has a potential to find your life partner, we certainly believe it could help you find your next sales rep or customer-service rep or a software engineer.”
Some of the things Canvas can do:
Suggest questions for the recruiter to ask the job candidate based on where the conversation is going. The app also takes into account the specific job the candidate is interviewing for. So if you’re sweating it during the “What are your biggest challenges?” section, the app might zero in on that.
Send documents back and forth during the interview. So PDFs and other docs—which could include job descriptions, company benefits, and employment brand—can be easily accessed by everybody at once.
Eliminate the need to take notes during the interview. The recruiter can give feedback on candidate responses (only appearing on their screen), which they can go back and review later.
“DVR” an interview, essentially. The transcript and notes of the interview can be sent to members of a hiring team who weren’t present, for review.
Interview multiple candidates at once. This, of course, could slash the overall time it takes to find the person to hire.
Canvas has been in production since the March pre-launch, and has already accumulated various success stories with clients for jobs ranging from welders to software engineers. It just recently added a healthcare plan to recruit nurses and physicians.
Through this creative process, Brar has talked with H.R. executives as well as recruiters to fully understand their daily challenges, and to build the tool as effectively as possible based on what he has found.
Anyone interested can visit gocanvas.io to get started. Pricing scales from small companies paying a few hundred dollars per month, all the way to large firms spending thousands of dollars per month.
Brar’s biggest hopes with Canvas? To transform the way a company can gauge with talent, “escape from the shackles of the phone,” and truly transform the game.