I see a lot of questions here about, "I applied for position X at a company; is it okay if I also apply to position Y?"

[sorry for length here; wanted to be thorough.]

my advice whenever i see these questions is to not do it, but i want to provide an example of why i say that, supported by something that just happened today:

1) if the company uses a software such as taleo, all your submissions are visible to every hiring manager for the positions to which you've submitted. let's say on 7/8 you submitted for X position, and then on 7/20 submit for Y position - both hiring managers are going to see both submissions in your history and they're going to immediately wonder if you're qualified for either position, instead just wallpapering. if they even pull up your resume at all, they're going into it with a pre-conceived notion about it, and that notion will not reflect well upon you.

2) this effect becomes even worse when you happen to have the same screener screening for multiple positions, with access to the live queue (because it's possible the HM doesn't even realize the actual history is there, much less know where to look for it). so, onto today's example:

my one boss ["boss 1"] is hiring for two positions - let's call them Analyst I and Mgr II. for this boss, when i log into the system as myself, it shows all his submissions (currently at 9), as i am his proxy.

my other boss [boss 2] is hiring for her own position - let's call it Director I. for hers, i was not added by HR as her proxy, so i have to log in AS her to see her submissions. since generally i don't screen for her - she allows HR to do it - i'm virtually never logged into her account.

today, i decided to log in for boss 1 and see if he had any new submissions, and i see five names, three i don't recognize, but the two at the top i do, as they both submitted in late july - one for the analyst position, one for the manager position, and i'd already screened them and passed the analyst candidate through.

i was wondering where the others went, but dutifully go in and pull the new resumes, and after i do so, i go back to try to figure out if the others were already rejected without my involvement (since with the three new resumes, we should've been at 12 in the queue, rather than 5). somewhere along this line, though, i realized that i was actually currently logged in as boss 2 and was looking at her queue.

so basically, here's what happened. candidate A applied for boss 1's analyst position on 7/25, and then applied for boss 2's director position on 8/2.

candidate B applied for boss 1's manager position on 7/31, and then applied for boss 2's director position on 8/1.

both candidates were in BOTH queues, if that was convoluted.

these three positions are vastly different than one another and in three different departments, by the way.

i tipped both HMs off to this (because that's my job - "boss 2, the two candidates at the top of your queue also applied for boss 1's positions days prior." "boss 1, your candidates also applied for boss 2's position days later."). both bosses immediately told me to reject both resumes - even though boss 1 had been interested in candidate A and boss 2 might have wanted to screen candidate B.

so the point is, don't wallpaper, guys. often times, HMs are aware of the other open positions in their company and if they receive a resume that isn't good for their position, they'll forward it onto another hiring manager whom they think might be interested - often even when that manager isn't actually hiring at all. i've seen this happen literally countless times.

but when you just apply to everything - in the same company, that is - to see what will stick, you often shoot yourself in the foot because you appear unqualified for all, and worse, not particularly interested in any specific role.

what's worse for these two candidates is that they've now been rejected for two positions, and when they submit for FUTURE jobs in our company, their history will still be there, which is where #1 comes into play. "these guys were rejected by two different HMs within days of each other; we DEFINITELY don't want these guys."

i know this won't be a popular story here, and many might take issue with how this went down, but don't shoot the messenger - i'm only here to explain why wallpapering a company with your resume can be a very bad idea.

sure, sometimes it can pay off, but it's far more likely to backfire. ESPECIALLY in a case where the relevant positions are very different from one another. applying for Mgr I and Mgr II positions in the same department? probably not so bad. applying for analyst/manager/director positions in completely different departments requiring completely different skillsets, as these two candidates did? pretty bad.

and again, candidate A was about to get brought in for live interviews prior to this.

(editing to add, in case it's mentioned - cover letters might have avoided this situation. such as, if each candidate saw boss 1's ads first and applied, but then saw boss 2's ad later and felt more qualified for that role. but in neither case did the applicants include cover letters to perhaps explain this [so if you're going to do this, at least try to stumble through some sort of cover letter explanation!]. it's also worth pointing out that in the case of one of them, he'd applied with our company no fewer than EIGHT times before, since 2014. again: taleo history. it's likewise worth pointing out that boss 2's position was at a higher pay grade with a higher title, so that also didn't reflect well. made it look to everyone - including me - that both candidates just wanted a job with our company period, and ultimately felt like they jumped too fast on the analyst/manager roles and so submitted again when a few days later they saw the [higher paying, higher titled] director role. somehow thinking this would not be obvious behind the scenes.)

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