Most tech hiring managers are not developers.

And that’s fine! You don’t need to be a coding wizard to hire great engineers.

But you do need to stop sounding like you just discovered Stack Overflow last night.

Nothing makes a developer roll their eyes harder than a recruiter or hiring manager who clearly has no clue what they’re talking about. If you’ve ever asked an engineer if they’re “fluent in JSON” or listed “Agile” as a programming language in a job post, this one’s for you.

Good news: You don’t have to learn to code to hire great devs—you just need to avoid sounding like an imposter. Here’s how.

1. Stop listing every programming language you’ve ever heard of

A job post that requires expertise in “Python, Java, C++, Ruby, Swift, Go, Rust and Perl” isn’t a real job—it’s a tech hiring franken-list created by someone who assumes more languages = better candidate.

Why this is a problem:

• No one is truly fluent in that many languages. It’s like saying, “We need a writer who’s an expert in Shakespearean English, French poetry and modern Japanese slang.”
• It confuses your real needs. Do you actually need someone who knows Python, or do you just think it sounds impressive?
• It signals that you don’t know what you’re hiring for. And devs hate working for teams that don’t know what they’re doing.

How to fix it:

• Focus on what actually matters. What’s the core tech stack? What tools does your team actually use? List those and nothing else.
• Stop making “Nice to Have” lists sound mandatory. If 90% of the job is React, don’t demand “10+ years of Node.js experience.” 
• Ask your current dev team what’s actually relevant. Trust me, they have opinions.

Need help hiring devs without the tech mumbo-jumbo? TechTeems can match you with vetted developers who fit your actual needs.

2. “Full-stack” doesn’t mean “knows every tech ever”

The term full-stack developer is one of the most misunderstood phrases in tech hiring. If your job post describes a full-stack engineer as someone who can:

• Set up AWS infrastructure
• Manage databases
• Write APIs
• Build frontend UIs
• Handle DevOps
• Fix your WiFi

… you’re not hiring a full-stack developer. You’re trying to hire an entire tech team disguised as one person.

What you actually need to do:

• Be specific about the stack. Full-stack in a React + Node.js environment is very different from full-stack in .NET + SQL Server. 
• Accept that no one can do everything. Prioritize skills instead of asking for a superhuman.
• If you really need multiple roles, hire multiple people. One overworked dev will not save your company.

3. Don’t use buzzwords if you don’t know what they mean

If you think “serverless” means “we don’t need a backend engineer,” we need to talk.

The tech industry is full of fancy buzzwords that get misused in job posts. Some of the worst offenders:

• “We use AI in everything we do.” (Do you? Or did someone in marketing say this once?)
• “We need a cloud expert.” (Which cloud? AWS? Azure? Google Cloud? The one in the sky?)
• “We are a blockchain company.” (Are you really? Or did you just stick some NFT code on your site?)

How to fix it:

• If you don’t know what something means, don’t put it in the job description. 
• Be honest about your tech. Are you actually using AI? Or are you just running some Python scripts? 
• If in doubt, ask your tech team. They’ll tell you if your job post sounds ridiculous.

4. Don’t make the interview a tech trivia contest

Hiring managers love to quiz developers on obscure knowledge that has nothing to do with real-world work. If you’ve ever asked:

• “How would you implement a red-black tree?”
• “Explain the difference between TCP and UDP in 30 seconds.”
• “What’s the runtime complexity of quicksort?”

…congrats, you’ve just made a great engineer feel like they’re back in college cramming for an exam.

What to do instead:

•  Use real-world coding challenges. Give them a problem similar to what they’d face on the job. 
• Look for problem-solving skills, not memorization. No one remembers Big-O notation off the top of their head unless they’re actively job hunting.
• Talk about actual projects. “Tell me about a time you solved a tricky bug” is way better than “What happens when you type a URL in a browser?”

5. Stop overselling the job

Every job post says “We’re looking for rockstar engineers to disrupt the industry with cutting-edge innovation!” But in reality, the job is maintaining 10-year-old PHP code while dealing with endless Jira tickets.

Developers appreciate honesty. If the job involves legacy code, technical debt or a monolithic nightmare that needs refactoring, just say that.

How to fix it:

• Be upfront about the work. Is it a greenfield project? Maintenance-heavy? Scaling an existing system? Be clear. 
• Stop using meaningless hype words. “Cutting-edge” means nothing. “You’ll be migrating our system from on-prem to AWS” is actual information. 
• Describe the challenges in a way that makes devs want to solve them. Developers love interesting problems—just be real about what those are.

Hire smarter, not louder

Hiring developers doesn’t have to be painful. But if you want top talent, you need to stop treating hiring like a game of keyword bingo.

Write human job descriptions, respect developers’ time, stop overloading requirements and for the love of code—don’t pretend you know what Kubernetes does if you don’t.