Science is prestigious and quick and quantifiable way to measure it are used as heuristic proxies. There are many angles to answer your question. Are you interested on the industry connection, how it translates to money, or the political aspects etc? People generally have little time for evaluation, there is an oversupply of applicants, being able to point to metrics can cover your ass against accusations of bias. It offloads the quality assurance to the peer review system. This person's work has been assessed by expert peers in 5 instances and passed to acceptance in a 20% acceptance rate venue where the top experts regularly publish. It's a real signal. They can persist through projects, communicate and defend it against the reviewers, has presented it to crowds, etc.

Its a prestige economy. There are other things too like having worked with someone famous or having interned in a top company.