We propose an approach to obtaining explicit estimates on the resolvent of hypocoercive operators by using Schur complements, rather than from an exponential decay of the evolution semigroup combined with a time integral. We present applications to Langevin-like dynamics and Fokker--Planck equations, as well as the linear Boltzmann equation (which is also the generator of randomized Hybrid Monte Carlo in molecular dynamics). In particular, we make precise the dependence of the resolvent bounds on the parameters of the dynamics and on the dimension. We also highlight the relationship of our method with other hypocoercive approaches.