No harm at all in reaching out to HR at office B to say you’re interviewing elsewhere but are still extremely interested in the working for office B and so wanted to find out about the timeline. No one will be offended or have any issue with that. Telling them you have another interview lined up to me justifies checking in on the timeline, so makes sense in that respect.Anonymous User wrote: ↑Thu Aug 03, 2023 11:06 pmI was recently invited to interview at Office A. I applied to Office B (office I would prefer to work at for personal reasons) and that posting closed about a month and a half ago. On USA Jobs, the Office B posting is still listed as Reviewing Applications/Received. Is there any harm in reaching out to the HR contact at Office B to express continued interest? Should I mention the interview with the other office? Office B is in a major metro area on the west coast if it matters.
That said, I don’t think you having an interview will make the slightest bit of difference to their timeline or anything, they will probably thank you for the info, note it in your file, and carry on exactly as they’d intended. You don’t have an offer yet and it’s not like interviewing for a judge where you might get an exploding offer; especially in a major metro, office B is unlikely to fight for you, but will cross you off and move to the next person.
I think the point of asking is genuinely so you have more info (like if they know they’re not going to interview for another 6 weeks or something your plan may be different than if they’re going to interview in 2 weeks) but it won’t do anything to speed up the process. If you get through the interview and get an offer from Office A and then reach out to office B expressing continued interest, it’s theoretically possible office B will expedite reviewing your application or getting you interviewed if you’d reached that point, but chances are decent that they’ll just congratulate you on the offer and wish you the best in deciding.
If you are, say, one of 3 finalists and reach out to explain that you have an offer deadline elsewhere, office B may well try to get you an answer before the deadline. But before you’ve reached that level in the process, you’ll probably just have to let the 2 processes play out and decide what you’re willing to risk.