Two interviews at the same company at the same time

Question

Long story short, I completed the entire interview process in department A of a large company two weeks ago, and after the final steps of the interview I was told by my friend who referred me (we will be working on the same team) that I should receive a call. I was initially excited but soon became doubtful when I haven't received a call yet. This week, I followed up twice - on Monday and on Thursday - where I was told that "things/finances are being moved around" before I get a call from the recruiter. To my knowledge, this is the current status.

Two days ago, however, I found and applied to a similar role in a different department of the same company, and was contacted by the recruiter for that department (This is a different recruiter). So I'm sorta stuck in a dilemma: Should I just proceed with the interview process with the second interview, or should I just wait until I hear back from the first interview, if at all? Normally, if it's for two different companies, I would go ahead and interview simultaneously - but this situation is a bit different.

Any thoughts?

Update About a week has passed and I haven't heard anything from the first interview yet. I did end up telling the second interview about my status for the first interview, and was told that it shouldn't be an issue. Who knows? Will keep this post updated! Again, thanks for the valuable feedback!

Answer 1

The position in department A does not exist, although at least one manager is attempting to create it. (Your friend thinks that he will be successful.) There is nothing you can do because you are not privy to the details of the campaigning and maneuvering that will or will not create the position.

Since you don't have an offer from department A, no one there has the right to be surprised if you interview with another department while waiting to hear from them. You should proceed with every interview you can get.

Answer 2

I have had a similar situation in a large MNC few years back. I just told the department who called me second that I am already being interviewed in different department. Then I told the first one as well that other division had called me. Both the division heads (not the recruiters in my case) made it clear that they would not prefer parallel interviews and go with other if first one did not work out. I would advise the same here. I think you should tell department B about your status with A and let them take a call on how to proceed.

In my case, they were nice and professional enough to give me an option where I want to be interviewed first but I preferred the team who called me first. (Got selected there and accepted it and never did the second interview!!)

Answer 3

This has happened to me. The positions were similar and had the same salary range, but they were in buildings 10 miles apart.

In my case they knew that the positions would be filled at a different pace. The policy they had is that if one position was offered to you, and you accepted, you had to immediately remove your name for consideration for the other position. They wanted to avoid the situation where you would try and get out of the first job because the second one made an offer a week later. They didn't want to be negotiating against themselves.

Other than that they had no problem with it.

Later on I saw this frequently when employees were trying to find a position within the company when their project was coming to an end. Some projects make hiring decisions in a week or two, others take months to decide. The employee need to apply for multiple positions or risk never even having their resume read if they applied for the slow position first.

In most modern job sites for companies it is very easy to apply for multiple positions. In fact the second one is trivial to apply for because all your relevant info is already in the system.