[dhotson]

I'm not sure if it's helpful, but if you want some perspective from someone that's interviewed a few hundred software engineering candidates..

I ask this question to every candidate I interview. My expectations for this question are very low.

I find it's a very effective screener for low effort applications. A lot of candidates I interview haven't even looked at our company website.

If you're the kind of person that's doing zero preparation for a job interview, I've already learned something about you.

Many people I interview just answer the question very directly:

- "I got laid off"

- "My current company is returning to office and I want to work from home".

- "I've been working at X for 5 years now and I'm bored"

- "I want to make more money"

- "I want to work with an international team"

.. honestly, that's all totally fine.

I agree that there's no need to pretend about your motivations—I'm not expecting a lot of enthusiasm about writing boring business software at my company.

On the other hand, if you've done some basic research about the company or the role and can ask some good questions—I'm learning something about your intelligence, conscientiousness and self-awareness, which are actually the things I'm testing for.

Job interviews are full of latent variables like this. As an interviewer I want to find out if you're good at X, but I can't just ask "are you good at X?". I need to test you out by asking other questions that demonstrate X.

[metabagel]

It sounds like you want the candidates to answer a different question than the one you asked. You want them to demonstrate knowledge of the company, but instead you ask them to muster up something enthusiastic to say about working for a company which they can only have superficial knowledge of - not having ever worked there before.

[dhotson]

Yep, exactly!

I don't ask this question because I want to know the answer.

The questions I'm trying to answer are:

- Are you intelligent?

- Are you diligent and well prepared?

- Are you self-aware?

- Have you put any thought into what you want and why you're here?

To find out the answers, I can't just ask those directly unfortunately!