Stephan Schmidt - June 28, 2026

Misconceptions About Hiring Developers

People have many misconceptions about hiring. With those in mind, people make mistakes. Let me walk you through what I’ve seen in many interviews, with many interviewers - and with myself.

It’s Not About You

The goal of hiring is not to make you look good. Some developers and interviewers want to look good in an interview. But it is not about you, the interviewer. Except the candidate needs to like you, want to work with you, think they can learn from you, and think they can grow with you. Especially if you are their boss.

The goal of hiring is not to show your intelligence. Some interviewers ask questions just to show off their intelligence. This is not about you. It is about the candidate. It does not matter if you are more intelligent than the candidate.

Repeat: It is about the candidate not about you.

Don’t Follow Rituals Blindly

The goal of hiring is not to follow rituals. Some interviewers follow rituals because they don’t know what else to do. They have read something in a book, or they have heard something from another interviewer. They follow a ritual without knowing why.

Don’t do what people on the internet tell you to do - except me of course.

Everything you do in interviewing needs to make sense to you. Otherwise drop it. If you don’t know how a question helps you make the hiring decision, drop it. If you don’t know how a ritual helps you make a decision, drop it.

Everything in the interview has one goal: Help you make the decision, hire or not?

Push Back When Needed

The goal of hiring is not to appear nice. Too often interviewers back down when the candidate does not answer a question. They don’t want to appear pushy and move on to the next question - though the answer didn’t help them. They just want to appear nice.

If the candidate is unclear or evasive, you need to push back and ask your question again until it is answered.

Classic: “What have you done in this project?” “We have…” - listen to the candidate politely and then ask the question again with the focus on “you”.

Everyone Can Interview

There is often the misconception that only managers and seniors can interview. Everyone can and needs to interview. Everyone can participate in hiring, even juniors.

If they don’t feel safe, they can just sit in the interview, listen and learn. But they have good questions too. Do not underestimate juniors. Brief them on their role in the interview before the interview. Do some post mortem after the interview. They’ll grow and it makes interviewing much easier if you’re not the bottleneck in the interview process.

You Can Only Hire Whom You Can Attract

There is the misconception that you only hire the best - often held as a company belief. Often people tell me “we only hire the best.” No, you’re hiring the best of the people you can attract - and only if you’re excellent at hiring.

If you only attract average developers, you can only hire average developers. Duh. If you’re giving off the wrong vibes, you will also not hire the best developers, even if they apply for a job at your company.

Don’t Hire a Copy of Yourself

A common mistake is to hire a copy of yourself. You have a certain way of working. You have a certain way of thinking. You have certain strengths and weaknesses. You like yourself - those things made you successful. Nothing is easier therefore than to hire someone with the same strengths and weaknesses.

This makes your organization fragile and easy to break. Resilience is based on diversity.

It also makes your organization less innovative. Innovation comes from diversity with many different, unconventional ideas.

Hire someone you can learn from. Hire for the things you can’t do yourself.

When Does Hiring Stop?

Another misconception: Hiring stops when the candidate signed the contract. WRONG. Hiring ends when the candidate is a happy and successful employee six months after having started. This means, after they have signed a contract, hand hold them until they start - stay in contact, give updates, tell them how the company needs them. After they start, do everything to make them successful.

When they are happy and successful, hiring has ended.

Time Is Of The Essence

The misconception: We dictate the timing. Many organizations drag out hiring over weeks. They waste time at every step on the way, instead make hiring as fast as possible.

Quick hiring shows excellence and signals interest and urgency to the candidate. Quick email responses. Quick interview invites. Don’t schedule an interview in two weeks. Schedule it tomorrow. Excellence makes you much more attractive as an employer.

Try to do the core of hiring with one candidate in one day. Have all interviews in one day. Make the decision the same day and tell the candidate the same day. Best case: tell the candidate during the interview that you want to hire them. If that’s not an option, tell them when they are on their way home. They will be surprised. They will sign with you, not your competition.

When you are fast, you put pressure on the candidate. If they have the contract the same day, they need to decide: Sign or risk waiting. If you are late, they have several contracts on their desk and yours is only one of the options.

Hiring Is a Sales Process

I often see the misconception, especially in HR departments, that hiring is a buying process. You get lots of applicants and then select the best.

Not in engineering.

Hiring here is always a sales process for your company. If you reject someone, the reaction should be “Ah, would have loved to work for them” not “Great, I would never have worked for them anyway!”

Tell them why you like working here. Be a testimonial for the company.

Tell people 90% of the truth. You don’t want people to be surprised when they start (remember, “successful and happy after six months”) working for you because what you told them in the interview is not what you can deliver. But also don’t tell them all your dark secrets, like that horrendous code in that one module.

Or that all-nighter incident.

But never lie.

Happy hiring.

Most of the CTOs I coach didn't know CTO coaching was a thing until they were already drowning. It is a thing - here's what it is.