I'll answer this from the perspective of an engineer SeatGeek where possible: I cannot speak for hiring outside of engineering positions, but we created a deve

I'll answer this from the perspective of an engineer SeatGeek where possible: I cannot speak for hiring outside of engineering positions, but we created a developer "challenge" as described here: http://seatgeek.com/blog/hiring/henceforth-all-job-applicants-must-hack-into-our-backend http://seatgeek.com/blog/hiring/henceforth-all-job-applicant... We posted the results here: http://seatgeek.com/blog/seatgeek-news/open-the-beers-and-wait-to-be-showered-with-job-applications http://seatgeek.com/blog/seatgeek-news/open-the-beers-and-wa... As far as handling the applications, I believe we handled most of the initial contact through email, and then gradually to an actual interview/job offer. GitHub/BitBucket etc. accounts are good indicators of developer quality, but certainly not the only one and shouldn't be the deciding factor. If this were true, I'd easily be one of the best developers in all of NYC - by sheer number of repositories, forks/contributions, repo collaborators and watchers - yet I graciously bow down before the other engineers at SeatGeek - and sometimes even the cofounders! Social coding accounts are a great way to find out if programming is just a day job for a developer, to see if they have an interest/knowledge of the area in which you'll work, or to perhaps verify things on their resumes.