You need to hire a DevOps engineer, a cloud architect, or a full-stack developer, and you do not have a deep technical background yourself. Maybe you are a founder building your first engineering team, a VP of Operations expanding into cloud infrastructure, or an HR leader supporting a fast-growing technology department. The challenge is real: how do you evaluate candidates for roles you could not do yourself?
The good news is that non-technical hiring managers can absolutely make strong technical hiring decisions. You will never evaluate a candidate’s Terraform modules or review their Kubernetes manifests, but you can assess the qualities that matter most in technical professionals — problem-solving ability, communication skills, learning orientation, and engineering judgment. Combined with the right support structure, these evaluations produce excellent hires.
This guide provides a practical framework for evaluating technical candidates when you don’t have an engineering background.
Questions That Reveal Problem-Solving Ability
The most important quality in a technical professional is not mastery of a specific tool or language — it is the ability to solve problems methodically. You do not need to understand the technical details to evaluate how someone approaches problems.
”Walk me through a technical challenge you solved recently.”
This is the single most revealing question you can ask. Listen for:
- Structure. Does the candidate describe the problem clearly before jumping to the solution? Strong engineers define the problem space before proposing fixes.
- Process. Do they describe a logical sequence of steps? Good problem solvers diagnose before they prescribe. They gather information, form hypotheses, test them, and iterate.
- Trade-offs. Do they mention alternatives they considered and why they chose one approach over another? This reveals engineering judgment, which is far more valuable than rote technical knowledge.
- Outcome. Can they articulate the result in business terms? The best engineers connect their technical work to business value — faster deployments, reduced downtime, lower costs.
You don’t need to understand every technical term to evaluate the quality of the answer. The structure, clarity, and depth of reasoning are apparent regardless of domain expertise.
”Tell me about a time something you built or configured didn’t work as expected.”
This question reveals how a candidate handles failure, which is central to engineering work. Strong answers include:
- Honest acknowledgment of what went wrong
- A clear explanation of the debugging process
- What they learned and how they applied that learning afterward
- No blame-shifting to colleagues, tools, or circumstances
Weak answers include vague descriptions, deflection of responsibility, or an inability to recall any significant failure (which suggests either very limited experience or a lack of self-awareness).
”If I asked you to explain [complex concept from the job description] to a non-technical stakeholder, how would you do it?”
This question serves a dual purpose: it tests whether the candidate actually understands the concept (not just the jargon), and it evaluates their communication skills. Candidates who can explain complex ideas in plain language typically have deeper understanding than those who rely on technical terminology.
Red Flags in Communication
You may not be able to evaluate a candidate’s code, but you can absolutely evaluate how they communicate. Communication quality is strongly correlated with engineering quality.
Jargon Without Substance
Be wary of candidates who use a lot of technical buzzwords but struggle to explain what they actually did. When you ask follow-up questions like “Can you explain what that means in practical terms?” or “What was your specific role in that project?”, the answers should get clearer, not murkier.
Inability to Simplify
Strong engineers can explain their work at multiple levels of abstraction. If a candidate can only communicate in deep technical language and becomes frustrated or dismissive when asked to simplify, that is a red flag. This pattern predicts problems with cross-functional collaboration, stakeholder communication, and mentoring junior team members.
Vague or Evasive Answers
When asked about specific projects, contributions, or decisions, strong candidates provide concrete details. Vague answers like “I was involved in the cloud migration” or “I worked on the infrastructure” without specifics suggest that the candidate’s role was peripheral to the work they are claiming.
Dismissiveness
Candidates who are dismissive of non-technical team members, previous employers, or the interview process itself are showing you how they will interact with your team. Technical skill does not excuse poor interpersonal behavior, and the cost of a bad cultural fit is substantial even if the hire is technically competent.
How to Structure Panel Interviews
One of the most effective strategies for non-technical hiring managers is to build a structured interview process that leverages different evaluators for different competencies.
Role Allocation
Divide the evaluation across your interview panel:
- You (non-technical manager): Evaluate communication, problem-solving approach, cultural alignment, motivation, and career trajectory. You are often the best judge of these qualities because you represent the non-technical stakeholders the candidate will work with daily.
- Technical evaluator (internal engineer or external partner): Assess hands-on technical skills, depth of experience, and ability to discuss technical decisions at a peer level. If you don’t have a senior engineer on your team, a technical recruiting partner that provides engineer-led vetting can fill this role.
- Peer/team member: Evaluate collaboration style, willingness to teach and learn, and interpersonal dynamics with the people the candidate will work alongside every day.
Consistent Evaluation Criteria
Create a scorecard that every interviewer completes after their session. Define what “strong,” “acceptable,” and “weak” look like for each competency. This structure prevents the interview from becoming a purely subjective exercise and ensures that every candidate is evaluated on the same dimensions.
Example scorecard categories for a cloud engineer:
| Competency | Evaluated By | Rating (1-5) |
|---|---|---|
| Problem-solving approach | Hiring manager | |
| Communication clarity | Hiring manager | |
| Technical depth | Technical evaluator | |
| Architecture/design judgment | Technical evaluator | |
| Collaboration and teamwork | Peer interviewer | |
| Learning orientation | Hiring manager | |
| Cultural alignment | All interviewers |
Debrief Structure
Hold a structured debrief within 24 hours of the final interview. Each interviewer shares their assessment independently before group discussion to avoid anchoring bias (where the first opinion shared disproportionately influences the group). Discuss areas of disagreement explicitly and resolve them based on evidence, not seniority.
Using Take-Home Assessments Effectively
Take-home assessments can be a powerful tool for non-technical hiring managers because they produce a tangible artifact that can be evaluated by technical advisors on your behalf.
Designing Good Assessments
The best take-home assessments mirror real work the candidate would do in the role. For a DevOps engineer, that might be writing a Terraform configuration for a specific infrastructure scenario. For a developer, it might be building a small feature with specific requirements.
Key principles:
- Time-box it. 2-4 hours maximum. Anything longer disrespects the candidate’s time and disproportionately disadvantages candidates with family or other obligations.
- Make it relevant. The assessment should test skills the role actually requires, not abstract problems.
- Provide clear requirements. Ambiguity in the assessment tests the candidate’s ability to read your mind, not their engineering skill.
- Include a follow-up discussion. The most valuable part of a take-home assessment is the conversation afterward, where the candidate explains their decisions, trade-offs, and what they would do differently with more time.
What You Can Evaluate (Even Without Technical Knowledge)
Even if you cannot evaluate the code itself, you can assess:
- Did they follow the instructions? Attention to requirements is critical in engineering work.
- Is the submission well-organized and documented? Engineers who write clean documentation tend to write clean code.
- Did they complete it on time? Time management and reliability are role-agnostic qualities.
- How do they discuss their solution? The follow-up conversation reveals depth of understanding, intellectual curiosity, and communication ability.
When to Bring in Technical Evaluators
Some aspects of technical hiring simply cannot be evaluated without technical expertise. Knowing when to bring in help is a strength, not a weakness.
Situations That Require Technical Evaluation
- Architecture and design discussions. Evaluating whether a candidate’s approach to system design is sound requires domain knowledge.
- Code or configuration review. Assessing the quality of a take-home assessment requires someone who can read the code.
- Depth probing. When a candidate claims expertise in a specific technology, only someone with similar expertise can probe the depth of that knowledge effectively.
- Spotting resume red flags. Technical evaluators can identify exaggerated or misrepresented experience that non-technical reviewers might miss.
Options for Technical Evaluation
If you do not have a senior engineer on your team who can serve as a technical evaluator, you have several options:
- Borrow from another team. If your organization has engineers in other departments, ask a senior IC or manager to participate in the technical portion of the interview. Offer to reciprocate when they are hiring.
- Use a technical recruiting partner. Recruiting firms that specialize in technical roles employ engineers who can evaluate candidates on your behalf. This is particularly valuable when you are hiring your first technical team members and have no internal technical evaluators.
- Engage a technical advisor. A fractional CTO, technical consultant, or advisory board member with relevant expertise can participate in key interviews.
- Leverage your network. Former colleagues, industry contacts, or technical mentors may be willing to conduct a technical interview in exchange for a similar favor in the future.
Building Your Technical Evaluation Muscle
While you will always benefit from dedicated technical evaluators for deep skill assessment, you can develop your own ability to evaluate technical candidates over time.
Learn the Vocabulary
You don’t need to learn to code, but understanding the basic terminology for the roles you hire will help you ask better questions and evaluate answers more effectively. Spend a few hours learning what the major technologies in your stack do at a high level — not how they work, but what problems they solve and why someone would choose one over another.
Track Outcomes
The fastest way to calibrate your evaluation skills is to track which interview signals predict successful hires. After 6-12 months, review your hiring outcomes. Which of your assessments correlated with strong performance? Which did not? This feedback loop builds pattern recognition over time.
Debrief with Technical Evaluators
After every interview process, ask your technical evaluators what they saw and what they looked for. Over time, you will absorb frameworks and heuristics that make you a more effective participant in technical hiring decisions.
FAQ
Can a non-technical person really evaluate technical candidates effectively? Yes, but with an important caveat: non-technical evaluators are excellent at assessing problem-solving ability, communication skills, cultural fit, and engineering judgment, but they should not be the sole evaluator of hands-on technical skills. The most effective approach combines non-technical evaluation of soft skills and thinking patterns with technical evaluation by an engineer or recruiting partner who can assess domain-specific competency. Together, this provides a complete picture of the candidate.
What are the biggest mistakes non-technical hiring managers make when hiring engineers? The three most common mistakes are: over-relying on resume keywords and certifications (which are poor proxies for actual ability), skipping the technical evaluation because it feels uncomfortable or they don’t have internal resources, and conducting unstructured interviews that produce inconsistent and unreliable signals. All three can be addressed by building a structured interview process with clear evaluation criteria and dedicated technical evaluators.
How do I know if a candidate is exaggerating their technical skills? Watch for these patterns: vague descriptions of projects without specific contributions, inability to explain technical concepts in simple terms, reluctance to discuss failures or challenges, and inconsistency between claimed experience and the depth of their answers. A candidate who claims 5 years of Kubernetes experience should be able to discuss specific production issues they have encountered and how they resolved them. If they cannot, the claim may be exaggerated. For deeper evaluation, bring in a technical evaluator or review the candidate’s work samples.
Should I hire a technical recruiter or train my existing HR team? For occasional technical hires (1-3 per year), training your HR team on basic technical evaluation and partnering with a technical recruiting firm for candidate vetting is usually the most cost-effective approach. For sustained technical hiring (4+ roles per year), investing in a dedicated technical recruiter — ideally someone with an engineering background — pays for itself through better candidate quality, faster hiring, and reduced bad-hire rates.
How important are certifications when evaluating technical candidates? Certifications (AWS Certified, Azure Administrator, etc.) indicate that a candidate has studied a specific body of knowledge and passed an exam. They do not, by themselves, indicate hands-on competence. Some excellent engineers have no certifications, and some certified professionals lack practical depth. Treat certifications as a positive data point but not a deciding factor. Practical assessments and project discussions are far more reliable predictors of on-the-job performance.