SimpleVerify is a recruiter-focused candidate verification platform that streamlines the process of assessing candidate authenticity across roles in product, design, and engineering. Born from firsthand frustrations with inflated resumes, AI-generated profiles, and unverifiable portfolios, SimpleVerify empowers recruiters to identify trustworthy talent faster, and before the interview.
It grew from a 2020-era prototype called Simple Tech Talk, a speculative tool designed to help recruiters verify basic identity and digital presence. Years later, with stronger experience and clearer understanding of the problem space, I rebuilt it into a modern SaaS product.
SimpleVerify analyzes candidate signals (e.g., LinkedIn, GitHub, GitLab, resumes, portfolios) using custom scoring logic per role type. It then surfaces a transparent Trust Score, flags potential risks, and enables recruiter judgment with full context. It’s not just about automating the vetting process, it’s also about restoring confidence to the hiring pipeline.
As the sole designer and product lead, I was responsible for:
Recruiters are facing increasing difficulties in validating who a candidate actually is. Especially post-COVID, remote-first work has allowed for more flexibility, but also more fraud. AI-generated resumes, fake portfolios, duplicate LinkedIn accounts, and misaligned GitHub activity are only some of the issues that currently plague the hiring landscape.
Hiring teams are overwhelmed, and existing ATS tools aren't designed to address these risks. Verifying a candidate’s authenticity has become a manual, subjective, and time-consuming process. One filled with blind spots and bias.
SimpleVerify is built to change that.
We conducted primary and secondary research:
To ensure the product was grounded in actual recruiter frustrations, we harvested dozens of quotes across Reddit (r/recruiting, r/hiring), LinkedIn posts, and blog comments. These became emotional anchor points for the UX decisions.
“I spend more time verifying a candidate than actually interviewing them.”
This encapsulated the imbalance in modern recruiting workflows. Recruiters aren’t just facilitating interviews, they’re becoming detectives too.
“Fake resumes are one thing. But I’m more afraid of not catching them.”
The cost of letting one fraudulent candidate through is higher than the cost of rejecting many.
“I don’t want to chase down 6 tabs. I just need a signal I can trust.”
This emphasized the need for one interface to provide and surface clarity early in the recruitment process.
These quotes weren’t just pain points. They were the foundation for what SimpleVerify needed to solve: time, trust, and signal clarity.
To guide the product experience, we developed a focused persona framework with Adrienne Hargrove at the center, supported by two key secondary and tertiary user types:
Adrienne works at a fast-paced, high-growth tech company. She juggles dozens of reqs, collaborates closely with hiring managers, and simply doesn’t have time to verify every detail of a candidate’s background manually. She needs clear, fast answers. Any tool that slows her down is an absolute dealbreaker.
Her expectations shaped the UX:
“If I have to waste hours learning your tool, it's not worth it. I already don't have time.”
Adrienne became the north star for every product decision. If a feature didn’t help her move faster or make smarter decisions, it didn’t ship.
Dan is an external recruiter who deals with high volume. He may contact 40–50 candidates a day and doesn’t have time to vet them all on a deeper level. What he needs is a way to quickly triage who’s worth calling, who’s a duplicate, and who’ll likely be a dead end.
His inclusion ensured our signal summaries were skimmable, sortable, and easy to act on.
Priya works on the compliance and infrastructure side of recruiting. She needs to ensure that hiring decisions are traceable and that verification logic can stand up to scrutiny. She cares about audit logs, exportable reports, and internal accountability.
Her needs inspired our export features, timeline logs, and override journaling.
This trio of personas helped us balance speed, scale, and trust in every part of the experience.
SimpleVerify is a recruiter-centric platform that provides clarity in the chaos. It automates verification without removing human judgment. Instead of trying to “decide” if a candidate is real, it equips recruiters with the clearest picture possible so they can make the call.
Here’s what the MVP enables:
Recruiters start with entering the candidate's email, phone number, and role. As soon as they hit submit, the system springs into action:
Once a resume and/or portfolio is uploaded:
Importantly, not all AI flags are treated as fraud. Recruiters are shown why the content was flagged and can override with a simple comment explaining why they trust the source.
Rather than an opaque number, the Trust Score is a composite of signal-based modules:
Each role has a slightly different formula. Engineers are judged more heavily on GitHub. Designers on portfolios. PMs on narrative cohesion and presence.
The platform includes:
SimpleVerify doesn’t dictate who to hire. It simply presents the truth—and respects the recruiter’s judgment.
We rejected the idea of a one-size-fits-all score. Instead:
Scores are transparent and overrideable with notes. Recruiters stay in control.
CTPs are our long-term vision. A verified profile that persists across roles and time:
Building SimpleVerify reminded me that trust isn’t just a feature, it’s one of the most important design principles.
This project wasn’t just about verification, it was about empathy. Empathy for recruiters drowning in noise. Empathy for honest candidates overlooked due to inconsistency. Empathy for hiring teams who want to move fast without compromising on quality.
Revisiting this idea after several years gave me a chance to apply all I’ve learned about design systems, stakeholder alignment, product-market fit, and real-world team dynamics. And it helped me turn a scrappy concept into a viable, trust-first product platform.
SimpleVerify represents my growth. Not only as a designer, but as a product thinker as well.
SimpleVerify is a response to a growing credibility crisis in tech hiring.
We’re living in an era where AI can write a resume, clone a portfolio, and blur the line between real and fabricated. And yet, the best recruiters know that behind every profile is a person, and every hire carries weight.
This platform was built with those recruiters in mind. Those who still care about integrity, want clarity without complexity, and want to hire fast and right...the first time.
As someone who’s been on both sides of the hiring table, I didn’t just want to design a feature. I wanted to design a compass.
Verify Signals. Score Trust. Hire Fast.
