I think each company has their own recruitment process, and it depends on the kind of job openings they have. I recently had my Google interview which was totally algorithmic. Despite of a number of projects and research papers in my resume, the interviewer did not ask me any questions pertaining to those projects.

But at the same time no way did it appear to me that the interviewer was not looking for passion in me. The questions that were asked from me probed whether I had the ability to respond to tricky problems, the ability to understand the intricacy of the problem and ability to respond.

At the same time the interviewer also tried to gauge my general skills, whether I would be able to contribute in a project or not. So I feel everybody has their own method of hiring. Particularly college graduates may not have github accounts to show that they have contributed to different projects. Sometimes I feel it is the only way to judge freshers in the sense they may not have a lot of projects to show, but they do have what it takes.