Yes, that's true. But authors only started including their inbound citation counts on their job applications in the last few years.

I think the main reason for this is that Google Scholar's citation metrics were free and openly accessible, and the Science Citation Index was, and still is, behind expensive paywalls. Scientists were happier to include citation metrics in their resumes when they knew that the committee could easily check them, and wouldn't have to pay to get access to them.