Claude for HR: Screen Resumes and Search Your Handbook
Every HR person I meet in class has the same two piles. One is a stack of resumes for a role that closed last Friday and has to be narrowed down by Wednesday. The other is a steady drip of emails asking questions the employee handbook already answers — how PTO carries over, what bereavement leave covers, whether the tuition benefit pays for a certificate program.
Neither pile is hard. Both are slow. And both are exactly the kind of work Claude for HR handles well, because they are reading-and-summarizing problems, not judgment calls.
Here are two setups I demonstrate in class. Each takes about ten minutes, and neither one needs IT, a new system, or a budget request.
Claude for HR Screening: Turn a Stack of Resumes Into One Table
Do not paste resumes into a plain chat window one at a time. Use a Project instead. In Claude, click Projects in the left sidebar, then Create project, and name it after the requisition — “Staff Accountant Req 4412,” for example. Inside the project, use Add content to upload the job description into project knowledge. That description now sits behind every conversation in that project, so you never have to re-explain the role.
Then attach the resumes to a message and ask for structure, not opinion:
Using the job description in the project knowledge, review each attached resume. Return a table with these columns: Candidate, Years of Relevant Experience, Each Required Qualification (Yes / No / Unclear), Notable Gaps, and One Question I Should Ask in a Phone Screen. Do not rank or score the candidates. If something is not stated on the resume, write "Not stated" rather than inferring it.
What comes back is a single comparison grid. Every candidate is measured against the same list of requirements in the same order, which is the part that quietly falls apart when you are reading resume number 34 at 4:45 on a Friday. The “One Question” column is the sleeper — it usually surfaces the exact gap you would have noticed halfway through the call.
The gotcha: the “do not rank or score” line is not optional. Ranking candidates is a decision that belongs to a human being, and a numeric score invites both bias and a problem you do not want to explain later. Keep Claude on describing what the documents say and leave the choosing to you. Also strip home addresses, dates of birth, and photos before you upload, and treat every “Not stated” as something to confirm rather than a strike against the candidate.
Get Straight Answers Out of Your Own Handbook
The second pile is the repeat questions. Create a second project — call it “Policy Desk” — and load project knowledge with the documents you actually answer from: the employee handbook, the PTO policy, the benefits summary, the current holiday schedule. PDFs are fine.
The prompt that makes this trustworthy is the one that boxes Claude in:
Answer using only the documents in this project. Quote the exact sentence you relied on and name the section or page number. If the documents do not answer the question, say "Not covered in these documents" and stop.
Now ask it something real: “An employee went out on leave March 3 and wants to know if she keeps accruing PTO while she is out.” You get a plain-English answer, the sentence it came from, and where that sentence lives — which means you can verify it in about eight seconds and paste a reply with confidence.
This beats Ctrl+F because search only finds the words you already guessed. Your handbook may say “continued accrual during approved absence” while the employee asked about “vacation time while I’m out.” Claude connects those. Ctrl+F never will.
The gotcha: that first sentence — “using only the documents in this project” — is doing nearly all the work. Leave it out and Claude will happily fill a gap with general knowledge about how PTO usually works, which is harmless for trivia and genuinely risky for FMLA, final-paycheck timing, or anything state-specific. And always open the cited section before you send the answer to an employee. You are the one signing the email, not the AI.
Plenty more on the calendar
If you want to see both of these built live, with real documents and time for your own questions, I am teaching Using Claude to Be More Productive as an HR Professional on Friday, October 9. We go through project setup, screening prompts, the handbook desk, and a few things I only cover when there is a live audience to argue with me about them.
The full current schedule is on the front page of PCWebinars.com, and new dates go up as they are confirmed. Register for this one, or browse the rest and find something closer to what is on your plate this month.
About your trainer
I’m Tom Fragale. I’ve been a computer trainer and consultant for more than 30 years, and I’ve taught well over 30,000 people how to get more out of the software they already own — Excel, Access, Power BI, Word, Outlook, and now the AI tools that sit on top of all of it: Claude, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot. My background is applied, not theoretical. Alongside teaching, I build real databases and reporting systems for clients in Excel, Access, and Power BI, so the examples I use in class are the problems I ran into last week, not textbook exercises. I also publish free tutorials on YouTube and longer courses online.
You can find the full class schedule, recordings, and ways to reach me at PCWebinars.com.
