programming contests as a way of finding/evaluating offshore talent...

hi.. i'm looking for opinions on the "worth" of programming contests as a way of judging the talent of potential software developers... any thoughts/pros/cons would be appreciated.. and yeah.. i know this is a little off topic.. but some of us here deal with these issues.. if you know of a better email list for this kind of question, let me know, and i'll move it to there.. thanks in advance! -bruce