Keep in mind that the OP is probably in a very different industry than you are; if you have enough expertise that your interests are things you can't work on independently (like quant or security?), you will likely be applying to a nonoverlapping set of jobs as the OP, which (I'd guess) are much more interested in experience than a github profile.

On the other hand, if you're a startup CRUD hacker, your potential employers are much more likely to expect some personal CRUD projects in your github, since 1) that's easier to do than personal quant/sec/whatever work and 2) there are likely a lot more applicants for such jobs, so they can afford to filter for "hustlers"