Applicant-submitted code samples don't correlate strongly with hiring decisions, in my experience. They're too easy to fake, and don't capture the things you want to know about interpersonal communication, thinking style, etc.
Yes, by themselves they're not much good, but if you explicitly ask for a recent piece of code that they're proud of, you can ask them questions about it: "Why did you use data structure X?", or "How does function Y work?" Much, much harder to fake.
Yes, by themselves they're not much good, but if you explicitly ask for a recent piece of code that they're proud of, you can ask them questions about it: "Why did you use data structure X?", or "How does function Y work?" Much, much harder to fake.