I came across a post of a photo of a question from a online job application. The question asked what your catchphrase would be if you played a neighbor character, in a sitcom, whose backstory takes from your real life.

Aside from the roundabout way of trying to draw more information from your past, I also think, this question is something I'd expect to get in face-to-face or onsite interview, not in an online application. And I've seen more and more questions regarding soft skills, in things that are now being "front-loaded" in a form instead of saved for a live interview.

To my knowledge, interviewing has never been a dedicated job but something that different employees might need to do from time to time. Seems like online applications and assessments like these are an impetus, maybe helped by HR or others, to diminish the role of interviewing so that employees can perform their main role more often. Does it follow a goal of trying to reduce and streamline the time employees spend on face-to-face interviews? I find it a problem because a lot of useful data from interviews is not just in the initial question but in the follow-up that can lead to other interesting tangents to learn more about the candidate, something that can't be done well with online forms.

I have never interviewed others for hiring so I lack this perspective. I'd like to hear what interviewers see in these types of approaches of moving more interview questions to online questionnaires, if it's reduced your role as an interviewer, and other ways that tools might be reducing that role, if any at all.