Part of the whole diversity thing is to also hire people who do not have programming in their list of hobbies. When I was at uni it was more common than not that people did not have any personal projects.

I haven't had good experiences hiring people who don't have personal projects. It's a strong signal that the person is self driven, can do requirements gathering and knows how to ship.

Well, people can have other hobbies outside of programming though. Be it sports or something creative. I agree that, in general, people with personal programming projects fare better, but it is not a hard rule for me.