[alexdias]

A few words in regard to the algoritm competition: you should give past competitions a try in order to get some practice. Your rating is determined by your performance in live challenges.

I'm not sure if employers look at it. Of course, if you get into the higher ratings, it's a nice thing to have on your resume. It also depends on the employer as well, I remember for instance one of the founders of LikeALittle was a TopCoder India champion, so for a startup like that, TopCoder experience might be something that they find interesting.

[mattgreenrocks]

Wouldn't it be more productive to create things for resume items?

[a3_nm]

Algorithms are very useful to know, both for interviews and for real life coding, but a lot of the projects that you'd pursue for fun wouldn't have a lot of algorithmic content. Problems from this sort of contests force you to focus on tasks which make you learn about algorithmics instead of spending your time on ancillary issues.

[alexdias]

Generally, I'd say yes.

Being high-rated in these competitions requires quite a high amount of practice and participation, so in that time, you could've been learning a lot of new skills and building things.

However, knowing a lot about algorithms can be very useful in many situations as well. And for instance, Google has those (in)famous algorithms questions in their interviews, so I guess you'd be more confortable in them.