About Corelance
We built the part between the applications and the work.
Corelance is where you ask every candidate the same written questions, score them on the same paid test, put the work under a signed statement of work, and pay whoever you pick. We collect their tax and identity paperwork, and your side of the agreement sits with us rather than with the worker.
Why we built it
What happens between the applications and the work.
Sourcing worked. Now tell twenty applicants apart.
The applications arrive. Twenty of them, or two hundred. Every one is plausible on paper, and every one is waiting on an answer from you.
What is missing is a consistent basis for comparison. One candidate got asked about their last project, another got asked about their rate. Two answered by email, one answered on a call you half remember. The notes sit in three places and none of them line up, so there is nothing to read side by side.
So the decision gets made on a gut feel. Often the gut feel is right. When it is wrong, the cost shows up weeks later, in work that has to be done again and a date that has already moved.
And once you do pick someone, the arrangement lives in a chat thread. Scope in one message, rate in another, no signed statement of work and no record of what was agreed. Payday is a manual transfer every other Friday from the company account to a person's account. A worker paid directly, with no contract and nothing standing between the company and the work, is exactly the shape a classification challenge looks for. It is also the shape that leaves you without an answer when someone asks who owns the output.
Corelance is the part between a stack of applicants and a person who is working out. The same questions for everyone, a paid test scored on one rubric, then the contract, the paperwork, and the payments.
Principles
The rules we hold ourselves to.
Six things that decide what we build, and what we refuse to.
- 01
Work is proven before it is bought
A skills test here is a real brief from the client with the bounty escrowed before anyone opens it, so nobody works for free. Every candidate answers the same written questions and every submission is scored against the same weighted rubric, so what you compare is like for like. The scorecard has to exist before a candidate can be hired or passed on. If someone disputes a result, we arbitrate it against the record.
- 02
Money sits in escrow before work starts
Contracts and test bounties are funded up front. Work does not begin against a promise to pay, and if there is an argument later it resolves against what was agreed and delivered rather than against anyone's memory of it.
- 03
The legal structure is the product
Your contract is with Corelance, and Corelance is merchant of record. That structure carries a written misclassification safe harbor and a reclassification indemnity, assigns IP to you on payment with a moral rights waiver, and sets the confidentiality and data protection terms. It is the reason the product exists, not a link in the footer.
- 04
The paperwork is ours, not yours
We collect the freelancer's agreement, their government ID, their tax form, whether that is a W-9 or a W-8BEN, and their payout details. You never handle any of it and never store any of it. You are also not the party filing contractor tax information returns.
- 05
Every engagement leaves a record you can read back
A statement of work you sign, a work order the freelancer signs, both e-signed here. Amendments need both signatures. Closing an engagement records a reason. Invoices are checked against the contract's rate and its caps on hours per week and deliverables per period, and can require proof of work or a named approver before anything settles.
- 06
Plain rules, plainly stated
A rule that decides money is stated once, in language both sides can read, and it is the same rule the product enforces. Nothing that matters lives in a footnote or in an email nobody kept. If a rule takes three pages of legalese to explain, that is ours to fix.
Where this goes
What we cover, and what we are honest about not covering.
Every company eventually builds a worse version of this.
A shared doc of interview notes. A folder of PDFs. A spreadsheet of hours. A recurring reminder to pay people on the first. It holds up for the first couple of freelancers and quietly stops holding up after that, usually at the exact moment the company can least afford to stop and rebuild it.
We would like to be the thing companies use instead, from the first applicant through the fiftieth freelancer. Today that means written interviews, paid skills tests, signed contracts, collected paperwork, invoices checked against what was agreed, and payouts to Wise, Payoneer, or PayPal. There is plenty we do not do yet, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Get started
You bring the applicants. We take it from there.