I get very worried when I see or hear of non-technical individuals recruiting software engineers without the aid of a technical individual. When you walk into a hospital, it's easy to assume the doctor is qualified because the hospital wouldn't risk the consequences of hiring an unskilled doctor. When we hire a plumber, for example, depending on the country, the plumber is either licensed or you believe that the consequences of an unskilled plumbing job aren't so severe that you have to be very careful with contracting a plumber.
HIRING TECHNICAL PERSONNEL SHOULD INVOLVE MORE THAN THEIR WORD
With software engineering, a bad hire can cost you time, money and lead to compromising situations with reference to user data and their financial details at times. I've seen conversations along the line of "oh! you can create a website? come and build me an app". Tech firms, technical individuals, and/or tech consultants are literally invaluable in the process of recruiting software engineers either for a small-scale project or for a corporate organization.
THERE SHOULD BE STANDARDS FOR HIRING
While I concede to the fact that company fit and other interpersonal relationship skills are useful in hiring software engineers, I believe we put the cart before the horse when we evaluate company fit and interpersonal relationships before we evaluate technical competence. As the freelancing economy keeps growing, the reputation of software engineers globally will rest on how well the process of selecting software engineers is done. A disgruntled client is more likely to attribute his/her displeasure to the competence of all software engineers rather than the process of onboarding the underskilled software engineer involved in the project.