Something big just shipped for employers hiring in Western Canada: recruit.jobads.ca, our new self-serve employer portal. Every feature launched today is free forever for job seekers and for employers on the Free plan, and you can be posting your first opportunity in under two minutes.
If you are a small business owner, an HR lead at a growing organization, or a hiring manager in Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, or Yukon, this is built for you.
Why we built a dedicated employer portal
For most small and mid-sized employers in Canada, the tools available today are stacked against you:
- Enterprise applicant tracking systems like Workday, Greenhouse, and Lever cost thousands of dollars a month and are built for companies with dedicated recruiting teams.
- Big job boards charge per posting, per applicant, or per boost.
- The free posting sites either have no application flow, or they force applicants through a wall of ads and account creation.
- Local employers, in particular, get lost in the noise of nationwide platforms tuned for Toronto and Vancouver.
We built recruit.jobads.ca as an alternative: a real employer portal, focused on Western Canada, priced at $0. Post as many jobs as you want, build a branded careers page for your company, ask applicants your own screening questions, and receive applications through a real applicant flow. You never pay to post, promote, or receive candidates.
What you get on the Free plan
Here is exactly what unlocks when you sign up:
Unlimited job postings
No spend caps. No per-post fees. No "sponsored slot" upsells. Every opportunity you publish appears on the JobAds.ca search results seekers already use, on your branded employer page, and in city / category browse feeds. Postings can stay live for up to two months at a time, and you can renew when the window closes.
A branded public page
Every employer gets a page at recruit.jobads.ca/{your-company-slug} with your logo, name, and every current opportunity. Filters let candidates narrow by location, category, schedule (Full Time, Part Time, Contract, etc.), and location type (On-site, Remote, Hybrid). Link to it from your careers page, LinkedIn, or job posts. Some Western Canadian employers we have talked to used to pay for a "careers subdomain" service costing hundreds a month. This does the same job for free.
Real applications, not just contact info
When you post an opportunity, choose how candidates apply:
- Through the JobAds.ca portal (recommended). Applicants use our built-in flow with resume attachment, and you see applications inside your JobAds.ca account.
- On your own site. Redirect candidates to your existing ATS or careers URL (Workday, Greenhouse, an internal careers.yourcompany.com, whatever).
- By email. Applicants see a "Apply by Email" button with your address.
- By phone. Applicants see a tap-to-call button with your number. Great for trades and hospitality.
Screening questions (custom + site-approved)
Under Question Library you can build your own bank of questions to ask candidates at apply time. Free text or Yes/No. Or pick from the site-approved global library curated by our team (things like "Are you legally entitled to work in Canada?" and "Do you have a valid driver's licence?"). Attach any combination to any opportunity.
Wage transparency baked in
Every opportunity has a compensation section: enter your hourly rate (with an optional Set-a-max-wage checkbox for a range). That wage shows on the job card, on JobAds.ca search, and on the opportunity detail page. Transparent wages get significantly more applicants and are becoming legally required in more jurisdictions, so this is not just a nice-to-have.
Company logo + profile
Upload a PNG or JPG logo (up to 200 by 200 pixels) under Settings and it shows on every listing plus your branded page. Add a website and phone number for applicants who want to look you up.
A modern portal you actually want to log into
Dark sidebar layout with clear sections for Dashboard, Opportunities (with All / Published / Drafts / Closed status filters), Question Library, and Settings. The dashboard shows your opportunities by status and a recent-activity list. Everything is fast (server-rendered PHP, no JavaScript framework churn) and mobile-friendly.
Signing up takes 60 seconds
The whole onboarding flow is instant. No review, no waitlist, no credit card:
- Create a free JobAds.ca account at jobads.ca/register (or sign in if you already have one).
- Click Become an Employer in your dashboard, or go directly to recruit.jobads.ca/get-started.
- Enter your company name (and optionally a website and phone number). Accept the Recruit Portal terms.
- You are dropped straight into your recruit dashboard, and a welcome email lands in your inbox with a quick-start guide.
From there, click New Opportunity, fill in the title, category, city, wage, description, and pick how you want applications delivered. Save as draft, or publish and be live on JobAds.ca in seconds.
Who this is for
Recruit.jobads.ca is designed for Canadian employers who want serious hiring tools without enterprise pricing. Concrete examples:
- Trades and construction companies in Saskatchewan and Alberta hiring electricians, plumbers, welders, or general labourers. Post the opportunity, list the wage range, and take applications by phone or email if that is how your foremen prefer to work.
- Long-term care operators and clinics hiring RNs, LPNs, care aides, and support staff. The site-approved question library covers work eligibility, driver's licence, and shift availability so you can screen faster.
- Farms, ranches, and agricultural operations hiring farm workers, herdspeople, and equipment operators. Farmers often already have a paper hiring process; email or phone application methods keep the recruit portal out of your way.
- Growing tech and professional-services companies in Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Yellowknife who want a modern careers page they do not have to build themselves. Point candidates at your branded recruit.jobads.ca page and let it do the heavy lifting.
- Non-profits and community organizations who could never justify Greenhouse but need to run a real hiring process. Free forever means free forever.
What about paid plans?
The Free plan already covers everything most employers need. Down the road we will introduce Business and Enterprise plans for teams that want:
- Candidate pools with tagging, sharing, and search across every applicant.
- Applicant messaging inside the portal.
- Offer letters with e-signature.
- Approval workflows so a posting can route through your HR, Legal, and Finance stakeholders before going live.
- Hire-source reports, funnel analytics, and time-to-fill dashboards.
- SSO / SAML for Enterprise teams.
Those features do not exist yet, and when they do the Free plan will still exist and still include everything it does today. Nothing you rely on for free will move behind a paywall later.
What about job seekers?
Job seekers keep the same experience: browse jobs at jobads.ca/search, save listings with the new bookmark feature, set up saved searches and alerts, track your applications, and apply with one tap using a resume you upload once. Everything on the seeker side is still free forever too.
When a seeker clicks Apply on an employer-posted job, they are seamlessly routed through the recruit portal's flow with the employer's own branding. From a candidate's perspective, applying to a job on JobAds.ca and applying to a job on the employer's branded page are the same experience.
Admin and moderation
Because this is a marketplace, we moderate. JobAds.ca staff can suspend organizations that violate our terms, review flagged content, and curate the site-approved question library. Suspended organizations have their listings removed from search immediately. Our goal is a marketplace with high-quality real opportunities and no spam or pay-to-apply schemes.
Ready to try it?
Head to recruit.jobads.ca/get-started. If you already have a JobAds.ca account, you are one click and one form field away from being live.
Have a question, or want to talk through your hiring plans? Write to us at [email protected]. Real people, no ticket queues.
We built this because we think small and mid-sized employers in Western Canada deserve the same tools as the biggest companies. If it saves you an hour or lands you a great hire, tell a friend running a business. That is how we grow this.