Short answer: name something specific about the role or the company, link it to a piece of your own work, and stop at three to five sentences. The prompt is less common than people fear: 6.9% of employers in our sample ask a "why us" question on the application form and 5.6% require an answer.
When it is there, it is written for the company: 66% of these prompts name the employer ("Why Acme?"), and 89% give you a multi-line box. Only 2.7% state a length, so you decide how long it runs.
How often forms ask
Most application forms never ask. Only 6.9% of employers include a "why us" question, and 5.6% make the answer mandatory. For comparison, only 3.0% of employers require a cover letter, so a required "why us" answer is nearly twice as likely as a required letter. The rate is almost identical in the US (6.7%) and elsewhere (6.8%).
The rate depends on who the employer is hiring:
| Seniority | Employers | Ask | Require |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internships | 212 | 11.9% | 10.6% |
| New grad and entry level | 283 | 8.0% | 5.4% |
| Mid level or unspecified | 742 | 5.9% | 4.8% |
| Senior, staff, lead and above | 655 | 6.6% | 5.3% |
Internship forms stand out. 10.6% of employers require a "why us" answer on an internship application, about double the rate for any other seniority. A likely reason is that there is little work history to read, so the employer asks for motivation instead.
| Job family | Employers | Ask | Require |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales and account management | 350 | 8.7% | 7.0% |
| Customer success and support | 197 | 8.6% | 7.6% |
| Product and program management | 187 | 8.6% | 5.9% |
| Engineering and data | 667 | 6.5% | 5.0% |
| All other roles | 666 | 6.3% | 4.9% |
| Operations, finance, HR and legal | 457 | 6.2% | 5.1% |
| Design | 156 | 5.1% | 4.8% |
| Marketing and content | 214 | 4.7% | 3.3% |
Customer-facing, sales and product roles ask the most. Marketing and content roles ask the least.
What the question looks like
The wording varies, but the pattern is consistent. Across the prompts in our sample:
- It is a multi-line box. 89% are long-text fields, 11% are single-line.
- It names the company. 66% include the employer's name, such as "Why Acme?" or "What excites you about working at Acme?". The rest ask about "this opportunity" or "this role".
- It rarely sets a length. 2.7% give a number of words, sentences or characters. When they do, the limit is short: among the few prompts that set one, the typical limit was 3 sentences.
- In our reading it comes in three flavors. Why this company ("Why Acme?"), why this role ("What interests you about this position?") and why now ("Why are you looking for a new position at this time?"). They want different answers, covered below.
The other written questions on a form
31% of forms contain at least one long written question besides the cover letter, and the median such form has 1. "Why us" is one of several themes. We sorted the long-text questions by what they ask:
| Theme | Employers |
|---|---|
| Describe your experience | 7.9% |
| Why this company or role | 6.1% |
| Skills or relevant experience | 3.3% |
| Project or accomplishment | 3.1% |
| Additional information | 2.4% |
| Accommodations | 1.6% |
| Values or culture | 1.5% |
"Describe your experience" prompts are more common than "why us", and they ask for something different: evidence of what you have done rather than motivation. A few forms add a culture or values prompt, such as which company value resonates with you and why. The advice below carries over to those, because they want the same thing: a specific reason, backed by something real.
How to answer it
A weak answer to this question is generic: it could be pasted into any company's form, which leaves a reviewer nothing to remember. A strong answer has three parts and fits in a short paragraph.
- Start with something specific you could only know by reading about them. A product decision, a problem the team says it is solving, a line in the job description that is unusual. "Your posting says the team owns the whole checkout flow from design to launch" is specific. "Your company is innovative" is not.
- Connect it to one real piece of your work. Pick one project, result or skill from your resume that matches what you just named. One concrete example is worth more than a list of strengths.
- Say what you would want to do. End with the work you are looking forward to, not with praise. It shows you have thought about the job as well as the logo.
| Weak | Stronger |
|---|---|
| “I am passionate about logistics and Northwind is an innovative, fast-growing company. I would love the chance to contribute to your mission.” | “Northwind's posting says the analyst role owns route-cost reporting end to end. At my last job I rebuilt our weekly route-cost report and cut the time to produce it from two days to three hours, which is the kind of problem I want to keep working on. I would like to apply that to your carrier data.” |
Match the answer to the flavor of the question:
- Why this company: lead with the company-specific reason. Keep the claim to something you can support from what they publish.
- Why this role: lead with the work itself. Name a responsibility from the posting and your relevant experience.
- Why now: be honest and forward-looking. Say what you want to do next, not what was wrong with your last job. Criticizing a past employer gives a reviewer a reason to worry.
Two rules for length. With no limit stated, three to five sentences is plenty. A box that is long does not mean you should fill it. If a form does give a limit, stay inside it, because an over-length answer may be cut off or rejected.
Reusing answers across applications
Because 66% of these prompts name the employer, pasting one answer into many forms shows. A workable approach is to keep a short, reusable core about the kind of work you want and why, then write one fresh, specific sentence per company. The core stays accurate, and the specific sentence is the part that proves you read the posting.
If there is no "why us" box
About two-thirds of forms have no long written question at all, and for those the optional cover letter is your only space for a personal note. The cover-letter study covers when it is worth writing one. The short version: write one when your resume cannot explain itself, skip it when the form already asks the question, and never send a letter that could have gone to any company.
On 12 October 2026 we downloaded application forms from Greenhouse's public Job Board API for 780 employers, sampling up to 15 open jobs per employer (9,401 forms). Percentages are employer-weighted: each employer counts once, using the mean of its own forms, so a company posting hundreds of roles from one template cannot decide the answer alone. Job family and seniority come from keywords in the job title, and a segment appears only when it covers at least 30 employers. The sample leans toward US technology employers and covers Greenhouse forms only. Method, limitations and downloadable data are in the full study. A "why us" question is a form question whose label matched wording such as "why do you want to work here", "why this role", "what excites you about this opportunity" or a label starting with "why". Prompts were read in their original wording. "Names the employer" means the label contains a word from the employer's name. The theme table counts long-text questions only (not single-line fields), excluding cover-letter and resume fields, and a question can fall in more than one theme. Length limits were read from phrases such as "250 words" or "2-3 sentences" in the question label, so a limit stated elsewhere on the page is not counted. The worked example is fictional and is there to show structure, not to be copied.How we measured this
Frequently asked questions
Do employers still ask 'why do you want to work here' on applications?
Some do. 6.9% of employers in a sample of 9,401 forms include a 'why us' question and 5.6% require an answer, which is nearly twice the share that require a cover letter.
How long should my answer to 'why do you want to work here' be?
Three to five sentences is enough. Only 2.7% of these prompts state a length, and the few that do typically ask for about 3 sentences, so a short, specific answer fits almost everywhere.
Who is most likely to be asked why they want the job?
Interns. 10.6% of employers require a 'why us' answer on internship applications, about double the rate for any other seniority level.
Can I reuse the same answer for every application?
Not word for word. 66% of these prompts name the company. Keep a reusable core about the work you want, and add one specific sentence per employer.
What if the question is 'why are you leaving your current job?'
Answer about what you want next, not what was wrong with your last employer. Criticizing a previous job gives the reviewer a reason to worry, and a forward-looking answer reads as more professional.
Ten questions per form, every form. Answer them once.
ApplyCandid fills the standard fields from your saved profile and drafts the open-ended answers from your real resume and the job description, on Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday and LinkedIn Easy Apply.