On the one hand you can put green dots in retroactively. So you could be fooled. On the other hand a genuine contributor may be working offline each day for mo

On the one hand you can put green dots in retroactively. So you could be fooled. On the other hand a genuine contributor may be working offline each day for months then do a big commit (squashing down the intermediate local history - can't remember the git term for this). What I think would be good is to instruct candidates to write a cover letter about their side-projects. Talk about each one briefly. With links to online repositories if available (or zip files otherwise).