I generally only look for the 'bigger' projects, and only really bother if it is explicitly mentioned as a thing to look at (e.g. used this open source project/

I generally only look for the 'bigger' projects, and only really bother if it is explicitly mentioned as a thing to look at (e.g. used this open source project/language). Even then my criteria is the same I would approach to a source code review: 1. Is the code well formatted? If you haven't been someplace where it is bad, you might not understand how bad can be. I'm not going to give someone on a pass on something even the worst editor can do great. 2. Does it look awful to build? I have seen projects presented to me that have no Makefile or appropriate mechanism to build the code successfully but 50+ source files. The exception here is obviously templates or ~1-2 file projects to solve a real problem. I don't want to hire someone who can't build software, or make their software nice to build. If those first two criteria aren't covered I'll skip to my last criteria: 3. Lack of input validation/error handling/logging errors. 4. Knowing common language constructs. Even in learner projects I want to see that you know how code should feel in that language. Python is one of the ones where this is most obvious, Java is one of the ones where it is least obvious so this is a subjective piece. 5. Does it feel like original work or tutorial spam? Where's the artistic flair or the completely engineered and mechanical thing that made this more than a 2 hour project, and worth your time? The main thing is that your resume should strongly reflect that you want to change careers as a dev and you want to demonstrate your skills via GitHub. I would not go fishing unless you ask. I'm going to look at your technical experience and general work history and ask you just as many questions about those kinds of things.