Hotmail co-founder needs to assist individuals discover jobs via TikTok-like video resume platform ‘ShowReel’

  • Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia has launched a new social video messaging platform.
  • It’s called “ShowReel” and it helps people create video resumes that can be sent to recruiters.
  • ShowReel plans onboarding companies that can select candidates directly from this platform.

Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith created “Hotmail” in 1996, one of the first free web-based e-mail services. It was acquired by Microsoft just a year later and then renamed Windows Live Hotmail and Outlook. Fast forward to 2021, Bhatia is now launching ShowReel, a TikTok-like social video messaging platform for people helping with job searches.

How exactly does the app work? ShowReel allows you to create video résumés of yourself, but in a dialogical way. There are pre-set questions for you to answer, record videos and stitch together. These questions were selected as the most frequently asked questions in interviews. ShowReel also has a TikTok-like feed that lets you browse and watch other users’ videos. You can share these videos with companies you want to work with and add a QR code to your resume that links directly to your ShowReel video.

“First you create your own profile. Let’s say you want to market yourself – one option is to submit a paper resume to different job boards or directly to different companies. And it gets lost and you may or may not be called for an interview. Or, you can be more proactive and include a QR code on each of your resumes or send a recent video. You actually send a video and say that’s me, ”Sabeer Bhatia explained in an interview with Business Insider.

How companies find candidates on ShowReel

ShowReel currently only has questions developed by Bhatia for four categories – professional, personal, start-up and leadership. The company is in talks with global companies to get them on the platform and prepare their own questions for job seekers. Bhatia wouldn’t name these companies, but we can expect them to join the platform by the end of this year.

“There will be a job area where you can search for specific positions and conduct interviews for that position. Job-specific questions are asked for this job. Companies will either ask questions themselves in this section or they will ask us to post them and you just answer those questions and you did your video interview with that company for the job, ”said Bhatia.

How job seekers can get noticed with videos

ShowReel aims to act as the first step on the journey to finding a job and, in addition to the process of sharing your resume with companies, aims to offer a unique approach. It is also intended to help speed up the interview process. Bhatia expects this to also help job seekers highlight their profile.

In ShowReel, you create conversation videos by answering questions about your name, education, dream job and more.ShowReel

“At the end of the day, if the person hiring, if they look at it and has ten résumés, only one of them has a QR code with a video to start with, who do you think this person will hire?”



Video profiles or resumes can actually work very well, and can even make a person stand out from the crowd. But for a company crawling the videos first, this can create bias. On this point, Bhatia said the platform is more suited to people faced with jobs like retail, sales, and business development. Features are also being developed for people who do not want to make videos.

“We’re going to help them create an avatar where they don’t even have to show their face and can only do an audio recording, for example,” said Bhatia.

Revenue models




ShowReel not only helps companies speed up the interview process, but also examines opportunities to shortlist candidates for companies. “We’re going to charge some money to reduce the number and use AI to only provide you with the best hundred of the best thousand.”

This is expected to become a revenue model for ShowReel as well, where companies are charged for posting jobs on the platform. However, end users and job seekers will never be charged for using the app, assured Bhatia.

ShowReel is currently in beta and the app can be downloaded for Android and iOS. The reason for launching the app in India is because “the problem is most acute here” and “you solve the problem where it is worst first”. Bhatia also suggests that this app give Indians a chance to self-market, which is quite common in the United States.

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