Looking for a job? Try Shrofile, a video-based platform that gives a snapshot of your personality

Using advanced crowd-sourced social analytics and visual content, Shrofile aims to change the way personalities of professionals are understood by others and the manner in which professionals interact with each other.

For decades, landing a great job been largely dependent on a superlative resume. But the digital era may change all that. With videos taking over images and traditional CVs, the right video resume can help job seekers stand out from the crowd.

Enter Shrofile, which is designed to help professionals, employees and freelancers across the world. This video-based professional platform crowdsources and highlights aspects of an individual’s personality, and is eyeing a slice of the $6 billion professional search global market pie.

Shrofile aims to offer a solution that is fun for the professional to use and where they can share their personality and is easy for businesses to make the right hire.

The fact remains that the recruitment industry is a highly disorganised in India. Of the over $1 billion (Rs 8,000 crore) in annual revenues, less than 20 percent is with organised players like Naukri, Indeed, Shine and LinkedIn. This is due to high volatility in the candidate mix and non-standardisation of the recruitment process.

By leveraging the power of B2C and B2B technologies, Shrofile hopes to disrupt the market for professional search.

Focusing on personality

Neha Lal, Co-founder of Shrofile, reveals why she feels Shrofile helps professionals to showcase their best self and show off the most interesting part of their personalities.

“Video comes closest to meeting a person. We believe video really shows who you are – body language, communication style, attitude, all inclusive. Write-ups or images can never come close.”

Shrofile wants professionals to be understood by companies like never before, making the first interaction a more captivating experience. Videos recorded by users are not addressed to any specific company and are a part of the user’s profile, enabling the platform to give an unbiased view of the professional’s personality.

Apart from professionals, organisations can also leverage the platform to showcase their culture, brand and vision to the world by broadcasting videos of their own management and leadership teams.

“We are not a video interviewing platform. We are a personality based platform that focuses on highlighting aspects of an individual’s personality through short pre-recorded videos,” Neha adds.

How does the platform work?

The product uses a simple 5E approach to get users on-boarded. On installing the app, users’ needs to perform the following simple steps to reveal their professional self.

• Express yourself: Record a 30-second video profile
• Enhance your video: Stylise your videos by using on-the-go easy video editing features
• Engage with others: Share your video profile with others; companies and users
• Explore other people: Uncover how other professionals talk about themselves
• Endorse with videos: Establish credibility of your profile by getting video recommendations

To perform the first E (express yourself in a 30 -second video), the platform provides well-researched pre-defined personality topics that can be answered by users. Each video covers a professional's 30-second response to topics regarding their aspirations, experiences, inspirations and other aspects of their personality.

Backed by HR professionals

Started in 2017, Shrofile has been consulting on HR practices and professional branding and its video-based platform went live in May 2017. The venture was started by two HR professionals, Neha Lal (40) and Rupal Prasad (29), whose years of experience in the industry led them to build a product that helps professionals express themselves beyond a resume.

“Our experience in HR was always the backing. Being in HR for 15-plus years, we had discussed our urge to build something that changes the world of professionals. When we came upon the idea of Shrofile, we just had to leave our jobs and get together,” Rupal says.

Neha, an alumnus of Delhi School of Economics, is a HR leader with over 17 years of experience across India, UK and the US. She has worked with Aon Hewitt, Nomura, Aricent and GE in senior HR leadership roles. She is a HR consultant to many multinationals and a professional branding trainer.

Rupal is an HR professional with expertise in consulting and HR analytics. Prior to Shrofile, she has worked with Evalueserve, Citi and Barings Asset Management, in India and the UK.

The duo later on-boarded Manish Rai and Nalin Mittal to take care of the platform’s sales and business development.

The road ahead

Shrofile is in the customer acquisition phase currently.

Neha says: “Revenue generation is not our primary focus as of now and we are concentrating on building a database of professionals on the platform.”

Shrofile is currently backed by a team of 12 people and has a database of 10,000 professionals with 8,000 short videos on the platform. It is also working with 10-plus MNCs in FMCG, Financial Services, Hospitality, Manufacturing and the Services sectors to establish its revenue source.

The startup has been self-funded till now and is looking to raise funds to accelerate the growth of user base and develop high-end AI-based technology to analyse videos.

The brand plans to generate revenues from annual subscriptions. It is launching a state-of-the-art SaaS platform for enterprises to screen professionals on the basis of personality along with skills and experience. Companies can use the platform on an annual subscription model basis; Shrofile hopes to make this the platform’s primary revenue model in the future.

Currently, Shrofile is also building a SaaS recruitment portal to cater to the needs of enterprises by automating 80 percent of the recruitment process. It will help them post jobs on the platform and review user videos using advanced search mechanism.

“Going forward, we have a lot of features in the pipeline, especially AI-based personality and communication skills analyses, and video enhancing and creation tools. We are also developing a path-breaking patent-pending personality graph creator that will allow people to see how they are viewed by the world, and review their blind spots,” Rupal signs off.