[elmerland]

If I were interviewing you I would care a lot more about the job you were hired to do than about any side-projects that are not part of your job.

I'm not a fan of recruiters incentivizing "required" side-work. That's the time you dedicate to all other important things in your life (which could be a side project, but it is not in most cases)

[bobsam]

The were two posts on Reddit about placing fakes ad for a job to see how the competition was. They were both blown away with the quality of the applications, in particular people working on a lot of important side projects.

I can only assume recruiters very much consider this when they don't know anything else about you.

[elmerland]

All things being equal if all you know is their side projects that makes sense. Normally you would have their resume which includes work done at their job. I get how it's so tempting to look at people's side projects as a measure of proficiency. I just don't think it's fair to judge people by their ability to spend hours working outside of work.

[tpetry]

Do you still have the reddit articles? Sounds interesting.