My first step when determining whether or not I want to talk to a candidate, is finding any code they've made available online. I'm much more willing to talk to someone who has published bad code online, than someone who hasn't published anything.

It's great if I'm impressed with their code, but bad code isn't necessarily a negative. I'm much more interested in why they wrote it a certain way then looking at their code with no context. Everyone out there has written bad code, it's understanding the decisions made behind the code that's interesting to me, in regards to whether or not a candidate will make a good employee.