I don't see public repositories as being a 100% indicator. The information they provide is useful, but I still want to do a whiteboard interview with candidates. There are a few reasons for this. Most of my personal projects are much simpler than what I get paid to do. Many of my repositories contain lots of good code written by other people and it's unfair for me to take credit for their work.
I like the whiteboard interviews because you can observe the end-to-end problem solving. You can see how people behave out of their element. You can see how they approach "an empty page". And you can ask questions that involve more algorithmic insight than "I wrote a Twitter scraper".
I like the whiteboard interviews because you can observe the end-to-end problem solving. You can see how people behave out of their element. You can see how they approach "an empty page". And you can ask questions that involve more algorithmic insight than "I wrote a Twitter scraper".