That only works if your task is equally unexpected/unusual for all candidates. If it isn't then either you punish them for being familiar with your stack (as yo

That only works if your task is equally unexpected/unusual for all candidates. If it isn't then either you punish them for being familiar with your stack (as you don't get that valuable knowledge) or you punish them for not being familiar (as you reward a good result). > you can take that into account I seriously doubt you can do this in a consistent and fair way. Whether someone does well in a completely unfamiliar stack is fairly random, so you're almost certainly filtering out excellent candidates who just got unlucky with understanding the IDE.