As you get more and more specialized, this starts to change. If my expertise is selling matts for large cranes, then there are like 3 companies that do that. The companies themselves are no special, but your expertise in that area does have a special alignment with what that company wants to do.
Non-specialized positions, again, make this question worthless.
Sure, but if you're a web developer, hell even if you're a senior web developer, the answer is almost always still "I applied to a bunch of places because I can expect more than half of them not to even give me the courtesy of an email, you’re not special, and I like being able to afford paying for food" unless you're applying to somewhere like NASA or something. I was asked this question at my first dev job I ended up getting out of school, and I ended up stumbling through it and said something like it was a good fit because of location and it seemed interesting etc.
As you get more and more specialized, this starts to change. If my expertise is selling matts for large cranes, then there are like 3 companies that do that. The companies themselves are no special, but your expertise in that area does have a special alignment with what that company wants to do.
Non-specialized positions, again, make this question worthless.
Sure, but if you're a web developer, hell even if you're a senior web developer, the answer is almost always still "I applied to a bunch of places because I can expect more than half of them not to even give me the courtesy of an email, you’re not special, and I like being able to afford paying for food" unless you're applying to somewhere like NASA or something. I was asked this question at my first dev job I ended up getting out of school, and I ended up stumbling through it and said something like it was a good fit because of location and it seemed interesting etc.