My experience is: Where I work, we value any signs that a candidate will excel, and open source contributions can be such a signal. If you casually drop the ne

My experience is: Where I work, we value any signs that a candidate will excel, and open source contributions can be such a signal. If you casually drop the news that you've landed some commits in a library that we're using, that will of course be a positive, because it suggests you are familiar with our tech stack and have at least some minimal technical competence. A good start! But...there's a lot of ways you can signal that, and since most of them are vastly less time intensive, I'd never recommend someone goes out and starts contributing to get hired. Contribute because you want to, and as a bonus, some companies (like us) will value that. But we don't require it by any means, it's just one signal of many. Which is good, because if we did require that we'd never hire anyone. In my experience maybe 1 candidate in 10 has any sort of portfolio of projects to share. And of those candidates who do have something to share, the quality is overwhelmingly poor. In fact... ...to the best of my knowledge, my current workplace has never hired someone because of their github profile or their open source contributions. But we have passed on candidates because of them, because we've literally had candidates proudly apply for "senior" roles with a portfolio of copy and pasted code full of errors. Bad code is much, much worse than no code, at least if you're claiming to already have expertise in the area. (Obviously I'd never ding a junior or new grad for that; context is key.) Anyhow, the short of it is: 1. Lots of companies will look at your github profile if you send them a link, and IF it makes you look good, it might help getting hired. 2. Nobody requires it. If you don't send them a link to your github profile, they won't ask, they won't stalk you and try and find one, and not having one won't even be seen as a negative. Hiring a candidate who has never contributed to an open source project isn't unusual; it's the overwhelming rule. 3. If you're struggling to get hired, and you have a portfolio of great contributions to widely used open source projects, let employers know, many will care. If you don't have that portfolio, then focus on something else. Even shorter: > Recruiters want people who do side projects They don't really care in my experience.