That's an interesting comment. I understand where you're coming from to a certain extent, and I'm not going to suggest that hiring is easy, but you can only be so skeptical or cynical about candidates by nature before it starts to negatively impact your process.
I'm of the opinion that a candidate who has taken the time to put together an impressive, polished showcase of their work, where the showcase is something he or she built (not a third party SaaS service), should start out as a more appealing prospect than a candidate who isn't trying to knock your socks off.
If it's a choice between somebody who's focused on making great stuff because that's what the company needs and somebody who is crafting another showpiece for their trophy case, I'll take the one who's less excited about self-promotion. Some of the best people I've hired are terrible at marketing, so I feel like my anti-marketing bias is a way of leveling the playing field.
Also, polish beyond a certain level is a negative for me. It's sort of like Calvin and Hobbes and the clear plastic binder: http://stephen-coley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Cal...
Basically, the harder something is marketed to me, the more I assume that the marketing is a necessary cover-up for a flawed product. There's a reason McDonald's spends circa 10% of revenues on advertising. Hint: it's not because there are a lot of people in the US who haven't heard of McDonald's yet.