The first thing I look at when looking at interview candidates code is their style. I don't care particularly if it's not the same as mine, but I do care if there's no consistency to their own style. I'm talking about hurried formatting, trying to squeeze everything into the least number of lines, mixed naming conventions, bad spelling in comments, even down to things like inconsistent spacing. Maybe I'm a prude but if I'm going to be looking at this person's coding output all day it better at least be readable.
That Linux managed to maintain a consistent coding style with so many contributors is an admirable feat.
As for beautiful algorithms, I quite like the simplicity of Dijkstra's shortest path.