[gampleman]

I don’t think the reason of “I already applied to all the better sounding ones, but they all ghosted me” is gonna win too many points either.

It really depends on the market. Sometimes there are great looking companies that you really would like to support because they somehow seem awesome to you. But you don’t always have that luxury.

> A cover letter is also supposed to explain why the company should want you to work for them.

For the generic cover letter that’s a reasonable thing to focus on. I’ve seen plenty of application forms that specifically ask the “why do you want to work for us” question (or even worse: “why do you want to work for us rather than our competitors?” which is even harder to answer, especially if it’s a tiny startup you’ve first heard of by reading their job post on LinkedIn).

[foldr]

>I don’t think the reason of “I already applied to all the better sounding ones, but they all ghosted me” is gonna win too many points either.

Not if you word it like that.

>I’ve seen plenty of application forms that specifically ask the “why do you want to work for us” question

That's what I'm saying. That's the formal question posed, but you can easily answer it by explaining why you'd be good at the role. "I want to work at X because I believe that I could make a significant contribution to Y given my Z skills".