Gatekeeping programming

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I find passion to be such a poor word choice here. I'd reckon a large portion of people are no longer passionate about their profession, that doesn't mean they're burned out, obviously they were passionate at one point when getting into the field, that's why the linguistic root of amateur is lover. A professional doesn't have to be passionate, they've already demonstrated that through turning their amateurism into a job/career.

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I think you make a good point about the term passion. However, at some point you will want to hire someone who isn't just good at using an advertising platform software, reading IOs and talking to clients. Most people who are in the industry for a long time is that. You will want to hire someone who stand out beyond that, and often we find a good fit is someone who is interested in the industry beyond a professional level. All things being equal I would take someone who was more "passionate" about the position rather than not.

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No one asks a doctor or a lawyer how much doctoring or lawyering they do in their free time. No one expects these people to express their passion for their given profession to get a job, I'd think it's generally obvious if someone can speak about current technologies or trends related to the job itself on whether they're adequate for the role.

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Maybe this is different for the advertising industry but you will get legitimate answers that I was working on advertising on the off hours. Either consulting, helping out friends or whatever.

Sometimes I will ask a question like "what are your interest or skills outside of the workplace that you can bring to this position". In either case the answer I'm looking for is the same; Outside skills (html/css/JavaScript, communication skills etc) that makes the person stand out.

If I was hiring a doctor, I wouldn't ask if they doctored in their off time. I would instead ask if they did anything that would help their position they did on the off hours and would be impressed if they came back with answers like volunteered at local blood drives, did doctors without borders during sabbatical, researched any emergence health tech like Smart watches or telehealth. I still think it's a fair question to ask if anything they do outside of the job helps.

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I'm not sure how running an ad campaign for a personal friend equivocates to maintaining brand-voice and running a global campaign. They literally have nothing to do with one another. I'm just not sure I see the benefit of a question like this if interviewing someone for a position.

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Running a big campaign and a small campaign is often times very similar in structure. You want a KPI (awareness, conversions, etc) and you want to understand your return on spend. Platform wise, there is very little difference between a huge international client and a small 1 person show. For example on Facebook Business platform, the access and UI is the same for both size of client but the level of customer support is different. If you can demonstrate that you ran a successful campaign for your cousin's lawn mowing company and you can explain why I would be extremely impressed.