I experienced this personally as I bombed a whiteboard interview because I'd been studying scala to work with them and programming a side project in C, and literally blanked on simple ruby syntax and idioms when I started to panic. When we started our own consultancy made 2 simple rules:
* Give people a take-home test that mimics the real work we do.
* Pay them to do it.
It's amazing how many candidates we find that are great at the actual work we need to do, and happy to do it, and how many people it weeds out who wouldn't be happy doing our normal work.
* Give people a take-home test that mimics the real work we do.
* Pay them to do it.
It's amazing how many candidates we find that are great at the actual work we need to do, and happy to do it, and how many people it weeds out who wouldn't be happy doing our normal work.