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Actually that's (almost) exactly how I did it joining Apple. I had already interviewed and been turned down with the group I wanted to join twice. Now I was coming in for another interview with a different hiring manager. I was willing to put up with another possible rejection because I really wanted to work at Apple. So I worked with one of the recruiters and had setup interviews with 6 other groups. I did 2-3 interviews a week and it was grueling but in the end I had several groups that wanted to hire me including the original team I wanted to join. They could only make one offer but nothing stopped me from interviewing until I was blue in the face.

EDIT: Another note, at least three of the roles I interviewed for had homework assignments. None took longer than 2 hours and I actually enjoyed them and the subsequent interviews much better.

>I'd love it if a company were to say, "Hey we're going to pass on you for this job in Division X but you know you're smart and Division Y's role is a MUCH better fit for you--why don't we hire you for that?" I've never seen this happen in my life.

I've had it happen twice (almost 3).

I just find a company, look through the listings, find a job I like then send an email explaining my qualifications and my interest.

I think it works well if the company is small and roles are fairly undefined ("You aren't an exact fit for this, but we want your skills for something else")

I've also seen this happen a few times, and it's happened to a few of my friends as well. Google does it a bit differently and makes you pass their gauntlet of interviews to ensure that you're totally overqualified for any position you end up in. Once you get hired there, they find a spot for you, but many many engineers there are super overqualified for what they end up doing. They end up turning away many qualified engineers because they're Google and have enough applicants anyway. If you're not Google or Apple or Facebook, you probably can't afford to do the same thing.

I've wondered if this might not also be a strategy to drain the labor market of talent that might otherwise work for a competitor or found a competing or disruptive startup. There is a limited amount of good engineering talent.

It's annoying as someone trying to build a team too. Oftentimes I see someone I know I want on my team or in my engineering org but can't Tetris them into the org chart. If your company is small enough and you need more smart folks on your team: HIRE THEM. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule but the right people are more important than parity between candidate and predefined role.

For the candidates, possibly/probably.

For companies where the number of spots is significantly dwarfed by the number of applicants, probably not - you either increase the levels of indirection involved between "initial contact" and "job offer/not" in order to try to add bin-fitting tiers at the beginning, or you significantly increase the burden of interviews by requiring them to be able to judge for multiple different types of role.

For smaller places, it's the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" syndrome - rather than trying to fit based on what the prospective managers/departments want, the initial pass is for ass-covering so that HR can't be accused of negligence if a candidate doesn't work out because they looked perfect on paper. Of course, then these places are left wondering why they have open positions for years...

Small enough companies (e.g. where they don't necessarily have full-time recruiters), I've found that your example at the end actually can fly.

Apple is kind of like that as a side effect. If you have the stamina and have the qualifications for it, you can interview separately for +10 different teams if you wanted to, with independent interview stacks. You won't have a triage interview like you specified, but you could kind of do it yourself.