> if you make it too hard in an employee market, you will have good to great candidates drop off... if you make it too easy, you will wind up at the bottom of the barrel

And where you set the bar will depend on, roughly speaking, your prestige. Google can afford to be extremely selective when hiring technologists. Similar thing goes for Harvard and the Air Force.

> what a person works on (developers) outside of educational or work settings gives a ton of information on how they work as well as what they know

The usual counterpoint: nuclear engineers and surgeons tend to have hobbies with no bearing on nuclear engineering or surgery. Nothing wrong with a competent technology professional keeping it to work hours.