Hi,
when listening to the last podcast today, Joel and Jeff were discussing if it is fair to use the Stackoverflow status as a means to filter potential job candidates.
I thought, wouldn't it be much simpler if a job applicant can take a test in any area he/she is comfortable in?
Actual questions from Stackoverflow could be used.
So for instance, Person A mentions that he's very good in cobol, and so is then offered 10 cobol questions taken from SO. They could then have to answer these questions (free form), or maybe they get presented 3 answers and they have to pick their favorite and mention why.
This way you get a good indication what someone's level might be, instead of only taking a reputation score which some people take more time to pursue than others.
p.s. When writing this down, I can see this is not very trivial to implement, but with the amazing amount of knowledge stored on SO, something like this should be feasible