I had a similar situation/question. I knew an old coworker who was eagerly trying to get me on their team at another company. They said I had to apply and then they'd take it to their manager who was already on board with the idea.

So I did, at 10PM or so at night. And within a few minutes, got a rejection email.

To this day I wonder if someone clicked reject, or the system just autorejected me because of something it didn't like on my resume. Needless to say, I gave up on that idea.