Xavier..
I've faced this situation, when I moved to IT recruitment from Finance.
I'll share little things that I practiced to help you understand certain issues
•How to identify fake projects on the resumes before talking to the candidate? – Look at the team involved in the project, time he has spent, roles he played, has he driven the project, what he has initiated etc, if you cant evaluate this from seeing his CV, do a telephonic. That’s the best way to gauge. Don’t fail to understand the COMPLEXITY of the project.
•Being from a non-technical background how can an individual check a technical resume. - Well the best thing here is to understand the vacancy from your SME (SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT) who has given you this position. He will brief the position to you, initially you can take his help in screening them, he would tell you what is a good CV & y, and vice versa, this will certainly help you. For e.g.: I always went to his Work-Ex directly, if he is a C++ guy, check what platforms he has worked on, is he in the designing side ( if he has used the words VB, user interface) etc etc..
•What should be looked into the resume first & how to identify the whether the resume is genuine? – As I mentioned earlier, go to his work-ex see if on the face of it ( after screening a lot of CVs with your SME, you will have comfort ot evaluate to a smaller extent atleast) he has done good projects, with high or reasonable complexity, if he has been a leader or drove the team..check his TABLES, these days all techies use tables to brief their expertise areas, check that. But never completely judge with just viewing the CV, make sure you conduct a telephonic before any preliminary round. As this would help..ask me how? Talking to candidates will help you learn, ask them to explain concepts, you will realize in a weeks time you have a better understanding. Try this exercise.
Do lemme know if this helped you.
:) Gayathri