When I hire, I always look at personal github projects. They are a hint that the person loves coding and loves creating software. I'm not looking for 1000 stars projects, and I don't even look at the kind of project, just the fact that the candidate has done some work in his spare time.
If there's no github project, I ask the candidate what website, web communities he watches/participates in regularly. I check if they are related to programming or building software (bonus point if you read HN :-)).
Both are good signs that there is an interest in the job that goes beyond paycheck.
While those are certainly indicators of interest, is their absence an indicator of lack of interest? In other words, "has side projects" is sufficient to prove "likes programming", but I don't think it's necessary.
There's only 24 hours in a day, and mastering any serious curriculum already takes the majority of those.
Then there's family: some have parents to support, and/or a spouse they can't just ignore all evening to sit in front of a terminal typing git push.
Lastly, plenty of people learn or tinker on their own, but they don't all have the (socioeconomically loaded) reflex of marketing themselves with a github repo.
Of my whole Bachelor's, Master's and PhD cohorts, I haven't known one person to have a github repo outside of employment. Some were building little things on the side but sharing them informally, never in public.
What you're looking for is people with no social life, no responsibilities towards anyone or anything (even just being an immigrant can be a huge time and energy sink), and with the social background to confidently market themselves by putting what's objectively noise online.
I happen to have kids and have always spent about 30 min a day, more like an hour, every day, looking at some side coding side projects. Being doing that before I was dad, now less since I am. But I still do. I'm past 50 now and I must admit the quantity of work I put out on side projects have decreased.
Side projects requires passion, not discipline, not effort, just passion. And that's what I'm looking for. When you like what you do you're generally good a it.
Now, I have hired people who don't have side projects, of course, they're not that common but not rare neither. And the side project question is sure not the main question. But that's a cool differentiator.
Moreover, questioning people on their side project is always more fun for them.
And of course, people with side project sometimes day dream so you have to keep them busy :-)
And having a github repo is a 15 minutes job. And most of the time, nobody will care about your side project. It's not like your marketing yourself. As I have said, I don't care about the stars. Just looking at what you do on the side, what interests you in a domain that is not far away from your job.
And side projects are always cool: I have interviewed people who were working on their game engine, planet trajectories, web sites for friends, playing with machine learning, writing little tools like Javadoc,...
Yeah I had a personal GitHub project in 2010, nowadays it is not feasible with kids. Time is either spent making money or getting together with family, with an occasional something else, coding for fun isn’t usually there (though I wish there was).
You’re looking for special snowflakes, but want to pay usual money. You may find that money also works as a motivation, a transactional relationship between an employer and an employee is healthy in that neither has to pretend there’s anything else that ultimately matters. (The illusion can be kept only until the first round of layoffs anyway.)
If there's no github project, I ask the candidate what website, web communities he watches/participates in regularly. I check if they are related to programming or building software (bonus point if you read HN :-)).
Both are good signs that there is an interest in the job that goes beyond paycheck.