Hiring managers have all sorts of opinions and expectations. Often they use lazy heuristics because hiring is hard work. Gauging passion (for the business domain or particular company) is one such lazy heuristic, ineffective in part because it is easily faked and sometimes not apparent. False positives and negatives both occur. It might also be irrelevant.

Also, yeah, you're right that I anthropomorphized after saying companies have no human qualities. There's a lot more nuance. The idea was that for groups of self-interested people following incentives to cooperate, they collectively have a much different character from the individuals within, in terms of their ability to reason, their motives, and their grasp on reality, among other things.