Resume Examples for Hiring Managers: How to Turn Polished Claims Into Better Interview Questions
I’ve been talking a lot about resumes, and how they can be used to identify candidates who are likely to succeed in a role. But when you’re looking at a resume, it’s important to remember that the document is not proof of anything. It is a claim map.
The best way to think about a resume is that it is a series of claims made by the candidate about what they have done in their career. The problem with a resume is that these claims can be written in such a way that they appear polished but actually hide over-packaged experience. When I interview people, I try to read each line against the actual job requirements, asking myself what problems the person is trying to solve and what skills or knowledge would help them do so.
A good place to start is to look at the summary paragraph of a resume. For example, here is a sample from an insurance verification specialist:
“5+ years of experience verifying medical insurance coverage for patients and providers. Proven ability to increase patient satisfaction scores and reduce claim denial rates. Verified coverage for 250+ patients daily. Achieved a 15% reduction in claim denial rates and a 20% faster processing time.”
This is a very strong summary because it provides specific examples of what the candidate has done and includes numbers to back up those claims. These numbers are also relevant to the job. If you were hiring someone to verify insurance, you’d want to know if they had reduced your claim denial rate, and how much they had increased productivity.
When I’m reading a resume like this, I try to take each bullet point and turn it into a question. Instead of asking the candidate what they did, I ask how they did it, what results they achieved, and whether those results were measured.
In the case of the insurance specialist, I might ask: “What steps did you take to achieve a 15% reduction in claim denial rates?” Or, “How did you measure the 20% faster processing time?”
But some resume lines are more interesting than others. A hiring manager should focus on the most common problems cited in sources—job duties, work experience, job skills, titles, dates, education, certifications, and references—and prioritize checking those claims first.
According to LinkedIn, 85% of job seekers admit to lying on their resumes. And according to Jobvite, 75% of hiring managers say they have encountered lies on a resume. That means that we need to be careful with our verification.
But while it is appropriate to check for lies, interviews shouldn’t drift into trivia tests or personal traps. There is a difference between fair verification and irrelevant gotchas.
If a candidate makes a dubious claim, it’s worth digging into it. But if the candidate simply says, “I am great at teamwork,” it’s probably not worth the time to find out why.
That said, there is one exception to the rule of staying focused on the job: when a candidate’s claim turns out to be something technical that could easily become a live challenge. On Workplace Stack Exchange, someone asked: “Is it okay to ask a candidate to prove their resume statement during an interview?” The answer was yes, but the response included an anecdote about an electrical engineer who was hired to fix a power issue in a building. During the interview, he claimed to have solved similar issues before. The interviewer then handed him a multimeter and asked him to test the voltage on a wall outlet. The candidate didn’t know how to use the device properly, which led the interviewer to conclude that the candidate wasn’t qualified for the job after all.
Once the interview is over, the next step is to figure out how to verify the information quickly. RoleProbe recommends that founders go through the interview process quickly and then spend the next few hours going through the interview notes, checking the candidate’s titles, employment dates, responsibilities, and other details against the job description and the candidate’s own statements. Then they should call direct supervisors to verify the candidate’s skill set and check the candidate’s LinkedIn profile to make sure it matches the resume. They should also check the candidate’s education and any certifications relevant to the job.
After the interview, the founder should sort through the answers to see which ones are supported by evidence and which are still vague. Those that are vague need to be verified, either through additional questions or by asking the candidate to provide documentation. Founders can decide whether to double-click on discrepancies or to stop the process early.
There is a template for using resume examples in interviews, based on the way RoleProbe plans interviews in fifteen minutes. In that template, you begin with one line from the resume and turn it into one question, then one answer signal, and finally one check after the interview.