I am coming to the job market this coming fall and a university that I am very interested in has a number of faculty positions that were posted simultaneously. Consequently, they are all positions that would be appropriate for me to apply to given my research.
Now, my question is-
is it a faux pas to apply to more than one position in a department?
Is this especially so with a competitive/elite university (e.g. Duke, MIT, University of Chicago, Standford, Carnegie Mellon, etc).
Do elite universities care more about exact fit or research productivity?
To give an example of where I am coming from, imagine a junior scholar's research area focused on "Diversity in Academia" (to use as an example). Within the past year, they have published in index journals on
- economic causes of diversity
- rates/trends in diversity
- a meta-analysis on diversity
- a large-scale experimental study on diversity
The university has positions on-
- policies of diversity
- economics of diversity
- diversity in education
In other words, all of my research is applicable to those three positions so I am uncertain how I should approach them.