The first call is decided by the questions you ask
A candidate can tell early in a call whether you have read their background or skimmed a headline. The recruiter who asks why they left a platform team after a year for a much smaller company gets a real conversation. The one who asks them to walk through their CV gets the rehearsed version.
The preparation is not difficult, it is scattered. Dated history in one place, what the employers do in another, code on GitHub, a talk on a conference site, a few public posts. This play gathers it onto one page and then does the more useful thing: it works out what the page does not explain. Those gaps are your three questions.
It also draws a line and keeps to it. The brief covers the professional footprint, meaning work the candidate chose to publish about their work. It does not cover age, health, family, beliefs or anything else protected, and it does not read personal social accounts, even where a profile links to one. A brief that strays there is a liability to you and unfair to them.
What you get back
One page in a fixed order. Dated roles with tenure. A line on each recent employer: what it does and roughly how big it is. Public work, each item with its link: repositories and the languages in them, a personal site, talks or articles, recent public posts about their field. Then the three questions, each tied to a fact above. At the foot, what was looked for and not found, any unconfirmed matches, and the list of sources.
Nothing is sent to the candidate and nothing is written to your ATS.
Variations worth knowing
Engineers. Where code is the evidence, the GitHub section can be checked against the tools the role names. Source engineers on proof of work instead of job titles covers that in depth.
History only. For a quick screen, ask for the dated history and the employer lines and skip the rest. It is the lightest version and often enough.
After the call. If the candidate is strong and wrong for this role, score one candidate against every open role in your ATS is the next move.
Where this goes wrong
The wrong person. A common name matches several GitHub accounts and several speakers. Matches are graded, and anything short of confident is kept out of the facts.
A thin footprint is normal. Most good people publish little. An empty public-work section says nothing about ability, and the brief writes "not found" and does not pad.
Reposts are not opinions. A post feed shows reposts under their original author. Only posts the candidate wrote are quoted.
Profiles lag. The history is what the person last wrote down. Confirm the current role on the call.
Treating the brief as an assessment. It prepares a conversation. The questions are questions, not findings.
