Whenever someone decides to hire someone, all of their criteria are heavily biased towards what kind of skills the candidates posses.

I wonder if someone can come up with a reasonably accurate way to determine how well or easily can a candidate acquire particular skills.

I realize this line of thought might not be popular for most startups who would want someone to get going as soon as they start. But if you're having a tough time hiring a Machine Learning engineer and you get applications from a bunch of smart folks who want to gain experience in Machine Learning, would it be a good idea to give them a shot?

The traditional 'puzzle solving' in interviews was probably geared in this direction, but I'm wondering if there are better ways to gauge this.