this may be true in startup land, where hires are evaluated by the engineers/managers/founders but it's absolutely not the case in the world of BigCorps. many recruiters (including internal ones) are less technical than anyone would like and have to operate on looking at key words in a resume before deciding what to pass along to managers. a github account with a bunch of code in it would be so confusing they'd just…
Of course, it can be gamed by someone who just forks a bunch of other people's repos, which a recruiter won't be able to spot but "github" is a keyword that can be searched for on a CV like any other.