A reader writes:
I’m on a small team of three that’s in a fairly specialized field, and we’ve heard that our site will be closing soon. As luck would have it, just last week a different company posted jobs for opening a division doing nearly exactly what we all did! They have three roles that seem to match the three of our skills and experience levels (manager and two different mid-level roles).
We all applied individually and got to the first round of interviews before learning the others applied to the same company. Would it be worth mentioning at any point that we all work well together, or not even bring it up? I’ve loved working on this team and think we get along great, and have complimentary skills. The role I applied for might be a little bit of a pay cut, but would be so worth it if I had the same manager and coworker.
I’d leave it alone for now.
If the three of you become finalists, it’s possible they’ll raise it themselves (I definitely would — I’d want to know what preexisting dynamics I was inviting on to my team!) but otherwise it’s safer to leave it alone. You don’t want to the implication to be that you only come as a unit or that you’d have trouble working with their new hires if your colleagues aren’t among them. You also don’t want them to worry that if they hire you but not the other two, you might be gravely disappointed. If they’re not planning to hire your colleagues and then they’re deciding between you and someone else and you seem like you’re going to be disappointed about the others, that could be a tiny data point that pushes them to the other candidate.
You also don’t want to introduce the concern that the three of you might end up as a sort of clique and have trouble adapting to a new way of doing things (something that can come up when you move a block of three people together).
Mentally, you’re better off assuming that it probably won’t end with the three of you all getting hired and let it be a pleasant surprise if you do.
