Omar Khateeb: Reinventing Hiring with Video — JobPixel Founder & CEO on HR Tech, Startup Pivots & Building Social Capital | Be Yourself Podcast

Omar Khateeb

Founder & CEO of JobPixel — on reinventing hiring with video, an unorthodox pivot that exploded growth, finding product-market fit in enterprise HR, and building social capital through authentic relationships

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50 minutes
HR Tech · Video Hiring · B2B SaaS · Startup Pivot · Social Capital

Listen to this Episode

About the Guest

Omar Khateeb — Founder & CEO of JobPixel

Founder and CEO of JobPixel, the leading video platform in HR and talent acquisition. Originally from Jordan, he moved to the US in 2014 to study at UC Davis

After enterprise sales in San Francisco, he co-founded JobPixel in 2020 with Anthony (who built bright.com and sold it to LinkedIn) — Omar drives sales and brand, Anthony leads product

What He Built
JobPixel — helping enterprise companies (10,000+ employees) collect short-form employee video for recruitment marketing; clients include Cognizant and Boston Medical Center
The Pivot That Changed Everything
they removed the video-interviewing feature and focused only on authentic employee stories — one feature removed, and growth exploded
On Relationships
In this industry without relationships you're going to have a really hard time scaling and growing. I wish I had built these relationships in 2020, not 2022.
On Product Simplicity
If you make your customer do math, you're doing it wrong. The tools that win are the ones that make it simple and make the experience the best it can possibly be.

Key Quotes

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in this industry without relationships you're going to have a really hard time scaling and growing.

Omar Khateeb
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If you make your customer do math, you're doing it wrong.

Omar Khateeb
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you can't be everything for everyone because you'll be nothing for nobody.

Omar Khateeb

Episode Chapters

0:00 Episode Teaser 0:50 Omar's Intro 1:28 Key to JobPixel's Success 3:27 How the Idea of JobPixel was Born 7:01 JobPixel Unorthodox Pivot 8:30 Entrepreneurial Seeds 11:14 Strong Partnership & Pivotal Points 13:45 Finding Product-Market Fit 17:20 JobPixel's ICP 18:50 The Effect of COVID on the Business 23:08 JobPixel in Action 24:05 Why the Product Should be Simple 25:16 The Power of Video in Customer Success 28:30 Lessons Omar Learned on Scaling 31:11 Omar on Competition 33:34 What Made JobPixel Product Stand Out 35:09 How to Build Social Capital 40:53 What Omar Has Learned from his Mentors 43:37 What's Next in Store for JobPixel? 44:12 Hiring Advice from Omar 46:12 Running a Business with a Friend? 47:05 How Can we Create our Own Life?

Full Transcript

BTW: This episode of the Be Yourself Podcast is produced by Beverly Media. Also on the show:
Eugene Kashuk — How to Fix the Broken Education System in the US: Brighterly CEO on EdTech & Startups →
0:00 Episode Teaser
Sergey My guest today is the founder and CEO of Job Pixel, a leading video sharing platform in the HR space. Omar has leveraged his love for simple yet functional products, discipline, and social skills to create a company that serves businesses like RunStat, Cognizant, Boston Medical Center and others. Just like stories brands tell through his platform, Omar has got his own unique journey in entrepreneurship. the one he was kind enough to share with me. I learned hell of a lot from this conversation and I hope you too will take away a few nuggets of wisdom regardless if you're an entrepreneur or working in a corporate sector. Thank you very much and enjoy the show.
0:50 Omar's Intro
Sergey Hello everybody, welcome to the Be Yourself podcast, the podcast on expressing our true selves. Today my guest is Omar Kepib. He's a CEO and founder of Job Pixel, a rather successful company in the TA space. Omar, thank you for joining me.
Omar Thank you for having me, sir. Really excited for this, man. We have some we have some mutual friends and we completed some videos uh where you were a an invited speaker. So I do know something about your company and it seems like you guys are everywhere in terms of you know appearances or sponsoring someone.
1:28 Key to JobPixel's Success
Sergey So I think my first question pretty obvious is uh to what do you attribute the current success of job pixel and maybe you can start off by just giving a short overview of what job pixel is and what does it do for uh the employer branding.
Omar Yeah absolutely. Um so we are uh the leading video platform in the space. We provide video content. Uh we're a platform basically that allows large companies to collect short form video content from their employees and then use that content in recruitment marketing, employer branding, EVPs, etc. Um and you know some of our cog, you know, customers include Ronto, Cognizant, Boston Medical Center, etc., etc. So we have quite a bit of clients that are above 10,000 employees because that's really the kind of the target that we go after. And I think who do we want to attribute our success for? I wouldn't call us like a success. It's never enough for us. We want to continue growing as a business. Um but the the reality is is that I think it's just the network that we've built of of friends, influencers, etc. Uh partners as well, uh like the recruitment marketing agencies. If if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be here. We've built a really good relationship with most of the people in the industry and that really just continued to excel us forward um in in this industry without relationships you're going to have a really hard time scaling and growing. If there's something I learned from Chad and cheese, our mutual friends, is that is that it's not what you know, it's who you know, right? And uh I think one of your motos is that people is everything, right?
3:27 How the Idea of JobPixel was Born
Sergey For all the stories that are successful, uh there is a beginning, right? I'm interested to know how did you get to do what you do? Like was it the first choice? Maybe you just can give us a little bit of your background. Where where are you from is the question I'm also interested in.
Omar Sure. So um I moved to the United States in June 2014. Um I uh came from Jordan in the Middle East. Um so yeah, I went to an American high school there. Uh got accepted at uh UC Davis. So I decided to move here. My best friend as well got accepted there and uh ended up going to school. Uh we started like my graduation year, I think like senior year, we had a little small company that I started with a couple of friends that was a hilarious startup that didn't really go anywhere. But um that's a story for another d another time. Um and then I ended up starting to work with um I work with like some funds and some other startups things like that from the experience I developed. But then I ended up getting a job with an a multi-ervice provider that sells Cisco products in San Francisco. I was working on on the sales side.
Omar And I was leaving the office one day in Embaradero. Uh it was like I think right before COVID hit like I think it's like you know either February or uh January of 2020 like it was just just end of 2019 etc. And I had just downloaded Tik Tok at the time I downloaded it deleted it downloaded deleted but that time like I just decided to keep it. So, I'm fli I don't know why I open up Tik Tok and I see this video of this guy named Mike that works for Sherman Williams, the paint company. And uh he like would bring blue, red, green in a bucket and then just kind of mix them and every he would post gets like two, three million likes, like 20 million views and everyone in the comments is saying, "I want to work here. I want to work here. I want to work here." And that's like the time when I was like seeing these like day in the life video content come up. I was like, "Huh, this is really interesting. I wonder if someone has really done this."
Omar Um, again, I didn't do deep enough research, but on the surface, I was like, "Okay, nobody's really helping a lot of companies do this." Um, and then, uh, so I was out that same week with a couple of friends. I was talking about the idea with one of my friends about like video and employees and all that fun stuff. And he's like, "Oh, you should meet my old boss." And I said, "Who's your old boss?" And which is my co-founder now, Anthony. So Anthony uh built a company called bright.com with his team and sold it to LinkedIn back in 2014 and he spent almost six years at LinkedIn building a big portion of their job ecosystem. Uh so everything from their job board to LinkedIn recruiter etc. And he was really the catalyst that made me like really jump into this and actually create the company. So I think we started like end of May, beginning of June in 2020.
7:01 JobPixel Unorthodox Pivot
Omar So funny because our pivot wasn't really like a direction change. It was removing a feature and that was it. We removed a feature and we just absolutely exploded our growth. We removed
Sergey So you were focusing on too many things.
Omar Well, no, not necessarily. We focused on the wrong aspect of video if that makes sense. Oh, so you pivoted, right? Yeah, but we but our pivot was removing a feature, not necessarily adding something new. It's just we remove something off of our product.
Omar We didn't like necessarily get rid of, but we cut off the or stop promoting and selling and showcasing the feature where where we would do video interviewing where the hiring manager is talking and the candidate responds back.
8:30 Entrepreneurial Seeds
Sergey Were you always entrepreneurial? Were you always coming up with ideas? Were you what was your uh main acumen um at the at the time?
Omar Yeah, but I I also I do like design. I really like product, etc. I I I love sales because I I like to talk to people and build relationships and friendships. That's like really where I'm always really happy. Um but I think that um yeah, like I I have a lot of passions, but if I I was entrepreneurial from a very young age. I used to uh pay make kids pay for uh to do projects for them in high school. So if they have a school project or a class project, I would actually do it for them and get paid. Uh especially um in 2010, one of my friends because of that um he told me to buy something called Bitcoin at the time.
Sergey You you did buy it? Wow.
Omar So I I used to funnel all the money I used to make from the the kids in my school into that and uh and PlayStation games. That's all I used to do.
11:14 Strong Partnership & Pivotal Points
Omar I have to preface that by saying me and Anthony in a weird way, we complete each other. the things that I'm that I'm terrible at, he's really good at. The things that, you know, okay at I'm good at. So, it's like we like fit like a puzzle in a weird way. And honestly, if that wasn't the case, I don't think it would have worked out. Um, yeah, usually when you see like two co-founders that are kind of the same, it doesn't really work. But Anthony and I, we like super complete each other. I think that's one of the reasons we also have had a good time working together because I can count on him, he can count on me and like we have this really strong level of trust together.
Omar I think if I would talk about pivotal points I would talk about the point when I met Chad Solash uh that was very illuminating uh to us because it helped me understand the industry at a deeper level and he really helped me connect to a lot of really great people that are now friends, customers, partners. Um um and you know it's been just great to kind of honestly connect with with Chad. Um, shout out to Chad.
13:45 Finding Product-Market Fit
Omar Well, um it's one is picking your lane. I think that's the first lesson is you can't be everything for everyone because you'll be nothing for nobody. So pick whether you want to be small business, you know, SM, sorry, call it medium businesses or large enterprise. Pick your lane. So I think that's a very important thing. Distinguish your customers based on their size and understand like which one is a really much better one for you to go after. Um me personally my opinion is always going to be enterprise but some other people might be a little different minded and that's fine.
Omar Number two is really the type of company that you want to go after. Like there are companies we would not go after, but there are companies we would definitely go after. Healthcare, for example, is a fantastic industry to share video stories, things like that of of employees. Uh pharma is another really great one. Um telecommunications, etc. Tech, not so much. Personally, like the tech industry, I wouldn't share that many stories.
17:20 JobPixel's ICP
Omar Well, we just it's it's just pattern matching, right? Seeing what we've seen be really successful, whether it's like retention, how they use the product, um how organized their team is in a weird way. um the larger company, the more organized of a of a TA function that might have they might have. If you especially in like the HR land, if you go like if you if you go to a really small company like 100 200 employees, chances are they only have like one person working in HR that does everything. They like host on Indeed and do all the legal compliance stuff and all the other stuff and all the work. But the larger company you have, you actually have a proper department that is uh segmented into you know different subd departments etc.
Omar Selling tech to tech companies is historically hard. Especially if it's like the larger ones like if you're trying to sell to Google like an enterprise software tool, they'll tell you, you'll hear it a lot. Oh, our internal team can build something like this.
18:50 The Effect of COVID on the Business
Omar I think both. In a weird way, it helped because it opened up the um this entire whole world of people sharing stories online because they were locked locked up at home or can't really leave etc. So I think that's the thing. But the other part is it just I mean it just made people sadder man like co was really depressing for a lot of people. Lots of people came out of that. They don't know like, oh my god, I've been locked locked in for months and I don't, you know, some people forgot how to socialize, etc.
Omar Effect number two is going to be just the economical just nuclear bomb that it dropped into the economy. Like we're still dealing with that today. I don't hate and I don't like the administration at the same time personally that we have in the United States. I'm just like, okay, you guys do whatever you want to do. Just don't crush us in the process, right? if if it's successful like I don't wish any whether it was Biden or Trump to like be be fa a failure. I don't want them to fail because when they fail we get screwed right around right like they do their term and walk away but when they fail we actually feel the effects.
23:08 JobPixel in Action
Sergey Is it is it effortless? Is it
Omar No, it is effortless because I had a a little demo where you sent me a request. So I I believe that an HR manager can send a request to a new hire, for example, that they were looking for for quite some time, right? So, they they they nailed this hire and they're sending the request. Please can you share a few words about why you you chose our company and right and and and here we go. The beautiful piece of content right away from this new hire, new person.
Sergey Yep. Yep. That's perfect. You got it right.
24:05 Why the Product Should be Simple
Omar I like I like businesses that are super simple to understand. Complexity. I don't know if I'm if I'm a dummy, but I just haven't had any success with doing complex things. And I think that actually you make your customer overthink. If you make your customer do math, you're doing it wrong. That's the that's the whole thing. like just just be straightforward, be simple, make your uh user experiences easy to understand. I mean that's just the way to do it.
Omar I mean honestly because uh like there are a lot of tools that do a lot of things in the world like and there are tools that I mean for example this Riverside platform I'm sure there are three other companies doing the same thing. Yeah. But I don't know why you picked it but maybe it's the user experience, maybe it's the quality, I don't know. But you have your own reasons and that's the thing like there are a lot of companies doing similar things in the world. So like always have try to have the best experience and keep it simple.
25:16 The Power of Video in Customer Success
Omar Um so you know on average we see a 34% improvement in their conversion rate after they add video content. Basically, the the whole point I'm trying to make is is that um we live in a world now where you know people really care about what is the conversion rate for something or what is the certain ROI that you can get. So, it's similar to you like wearing that shirt right now that you have on. If you have two websites, u one website has a video of the chart and the other one has just a picture, you're probably more likely to buy from the one with um the video. That's just the truth.
Omar Yeah. And that's really where we drive conversion rate. The next thing we really affect, and it depends on the customer, is a reduction in the bounce rate. A bounce rate is um basically defined as someone Googles you, they come to your website and then they leave. Okay? The lower your bounce rate, the better it is that your website will actually, you know, grow and rank better on SEO. And then the last one, which is kind of also connected to bounce rate, is time on site, right? How long can you uh keep people on your website? The longer a customer or prospect or visitor is on your website, you uh you have higher chances of converting them to to make it to take an action.
Omar We already have the customer. We we want the customer to be successful and then that's how they decide whether we're worth it or not. Um yeah, we don't take our customers work and videos as our own success. I think they've succeeded. they reach out to us and say, "Hey, like this went really well. Thank you so much. This is amazing." And that's that's what gets us excited and moving forward.
28:30 Lessons Omar Learned on Scaling
Omar Um so in this industry partnerships are really really important because a lot of the customers that you'll meet they will ask you who do you work with? Do you work with this company that we already work with? Do you work with this platform we already work with? So having a good relationship with everyone is actually almost like the magic bullet to have really good in this industry.
Omar um when they when clients in our space hear that you work with their existing provider or they work with you know you work with their platform or something like that it just really takes down that level of like uh you know trust sorry skepticism let's do it this way skepticism is here it goes down to here and then trust goes down from here all the way to here and just because you you work with someone they know yep they're going to ask you themselves if you work with really wow happens all the time.
Omar I wish I built the the amazing relationships we have now in 2020 not two years ago and you know 2023 or 2022 like that was really the only delay I if if we did that earlier we would have known our path earlier we would have the partners here are really really great seriously they're fantastic.
31:11 Omar on Competition
Omar I a lot of people look at competition as a scary thing. I actually welcome it and I like it because one, it gives you more credibility that what you're working on is actually real because other smart people are also trying to do the same thing you're trying to do. Um number two is it's it's a motivation. I think that when you have competition, like if it's only just you, a monopoly, who the hell are you going to compete with? You're going to compete with yourself. Makes no sense. Yeah. But when you have competition, you're actually always having like someone that you're actually competing with to make you better. And I and I like that a lot.
Omar um so I I just I like I like the way that they, you know, they do that honestly. It's just I love competition. I I appreciate it. I I've made friends with some of our competitors as well. We have had drinks together, etc. And I like working with them. That's the way it is because we're we're supposed to coexist. Like there is no one company wins all. It just doesn't work like that. You expand the market together. You bring more people into it.
33:34 What Made JobPixel Product Stand Out
Omar I mean the ease of use. Our our support is also pretty incredible. Lots of people love um our uh you know how our team connects with them etc. Our integrations are basically yeah flawless with every single one of the partners that we have. How big is your team? Um like how many people in total? 12 12 people and then we have like 16 total outside of like other contractors as well. So like yeah I would say 16 total.
Sergey And who was responsible for the technical side? who engineered the entire thing?
Omar My my co-founder Anthony and his uh team. Our engineers are pretty incredible.
35:09 How to Build Social Capital
Sergey Have you learned some tips and tips and tricks about uh networking? Because it appears that you're a professional networker, Omar. So, before you had a brand that was speaking for itself. What What was the secret sauce, man?
Omar There isn't really a secret. I just love people, man. I like I like making friends. I mean, that's it. Be genuine. Be real. Like no one gives a [ __ ] at the end of the day. Like I always look at it I mean yeah it's like I I meet a lot of people they're like oh this person is the VP of this person is the seauite of that. I'm like okay that's fine but are they do they breathe air? Do they eat food? Do they uh probably have a dog and a wife or a husband and kill them? Probably. At the end of the day they're just a normal human being like us. We want a social connection. We want people to be nice to us. We want people to respect us. We want to be listened to.
Omar And that's pretty much it. I mean, I think that's that that's it. Um, just be yourself, be kind, listen to folks, and, you know, and be interested in what they have to say as well. I I think that lots of people as well, they come in and they just talk and talk and talk and talk uh when you're in like circles and they never ask you, "Oh, what about you?" It's like really that's like one of the things like that the banter is what makes inter you know interpersonal communications uh really easy is you just it's like a ping pong. Okay. It's not it's not like oh let me just like grab the arrow and keep throwing as much things. It has to be a ping pong. Okay. It's not a one-sided thing.
Omar And you should not expect everyone to like you. And that's okay. Like there's a lot of people who like strive to be liked by everyone and I'm like, listen, like there are people that are going to like just despise you, man. And then there's going to be people who are gonna love you. And there are going to be people that are in the middle. And that's totally fine, right? I have people who've literally said, "Oh, you're loud." Or, "Oh, I don't like being around you. That's fine. Whatever your opinion." And then I have people who like give me hugs and kisses and whenever they see me. And then there's people who are like, "Good to see you. Good to see you." And that's fine. That's all of us.
40:53 What Omar Has Learned from his Mentors
Omar Um Chad has all always repeats this phrase to me. It's like stay focused, stay focused, stay focused. And I that's a very valuable lesson of like um you know just being laser focused as a startup founder not getting distracted by really shiny things and just really focusing on like the core problem that you're trying to solve. I think that's really important.
Omar Um, I have another person, but I'm I'm not going to mention their name, uh, because they don't like to be public, but they're very well known in our industry, is the they told me that the secret to their success was remaining calm all the time whenever things like got out of hand. So, I think just like really always having a cool head. Um, it drives my wife Zen like a Zen master, but it's difficult to be that way, man.
Omar And then the last one is also another really great person in the industry that probably wouldn't want to be mentioned is um you know hire A players. If you want to you know B player you know a B- level or a C- level outcome hire you know bad people. If you want to hire you know have a really good success you got to hire those A players.
43:37 What's Next in Store for JobPixel?
Omar Well, we're going to be hiring a bunch of folks shortly here to continue growing the business um and keep it going. But yeah, I I interview a lot of people every single time where we open up a role. I mean, yeah, our last hire, I think we've interviewed about 50 people to get to who we want to end up hiring. One hire.
Sergey So, you you conducted 50 interviews. 50. Yes. for one
Omar 50. Yes.
44:12 Hiring Advice from Omar
Omar You gota you got to find someone that works with the with the team, man. It's it's so weird. Like if if someone does does not work with your team, it it can just break the entire system for you. So like just you'll know with your gut like if someone is going to fit or not. You just know. Trust your gut if they're a jerk. Yeah. Don't hire jerks. Like, you don't want jerks. You don't want people bullying your, you know, your your co-workers.
Omar Do you believe in probation in order to like not put so much emphasis on hiring but let them in? It depends. It depends. Um if it's like a, you know, a role where I can quickly find out if something is going to work or not, uh, sure. If it's just a position where, you know, it's going to take a while to even find out, I wouldn't even go down that route. Like, if you're hiring an account executive, like it makes no sense to do it. There's literally no point because uh average ramp up in an enterprise selling business is probably six months. But if you hire an engineer, yeah, maybe you can you can probably do that. You can give them a couple of co code projects, see how it how it went.
46:12 Running a Business with a Friend?
Sergey Were you and so basically you are running business with your friend Anthony and you were friends before you started the business?
Omar No we no we started the business then we became friends.
Sergey Do you think it's a better it's a better sequence?
Omar I don't I don't have really an opinion on that. I I I mean it's up to them. I mean, everyone's different. I I don't know. I mean, the the Stripe the Stripe founders are brothers.
47:05 How Can we Create our Own Life?
Sergey The people who create their own destiny, right? Who are not just managing the circumstances but they're creating their own life path. How do can we more of us create our own life path that we really enjoy every single day and not feel like work is work?
Omar I think that uh it's a realization that need that a lot of people need to kind of go into like you're everyone is really capable of doing things like I'm not special like even if you look at like big companies out there in the world that are much we're still such a small company there are big companies out there some of these people are just very normal people you can push yourself but some people are just not willing to put in the work it's just the truth.
Omar I I I like this phrase that success is just luck. Luck is just the number of attempts you take. Sure. So you create your own luck. Yeah. So I think Yeah. I mean just really like working working smart and hard at the same time. I think that's pretty much it. And then just doing something you're passionate about.
Omar Like it's just a lot of people I think the reason that like it's really there's only a few ways to really become successful. A and if we're calling success money is you are a virtuosa which means you have a very certain skill that you can do. So you're a doctor engineer, you're an acrobat, something like that. You're good at a certain thing and you can make a lot of money from it. Number two, you're you become an asset manager. You're managing money for other people and then you make money by investing that money. That's why a lot of people in asset management like hedge funds or venture, they they tend to be wealthy. Number three is entrepreneurship. You're you've created your own company or business. You don't necessarily have a skill that no one else has and you're not necessarily managing money. But those are really the three ways to make a lot of money and actually be but you're passionate in the number three. You're passionate about something. Yeah, that's what comes with entrepreneurship usually, right? But those are really the three ways.
Sergey Omar, thanks a lot, man. That was brilliant.
Omar Thank you. I appreciate you.