The best way to track your job applications

Nov. 23, 2022

Why track your job applications

What is the point of tracking your applications? Why not just apply and deal with them when the job poster gets back to you? There are many reasons it’s helpful to track all your applications in one place. First and foremost when you receive that phone call saying that they want to speak to you about the “.....” job that you applied for, it’s kind of embarrassing that you can’t even remember what it was. Often Job posts will be taken down once the selection process has started. How can you prepare for an interview if you don’t even remember what they were looking for? I suppose you could ask the hiring manager for a copy of the original job offer but it doesn’t leave a great first impression does it?

Not only is it important to have a copy of the original job posting but if you customise your CV and cover letter it is really important to remember which format you used for the application. A simple trick is to just adjust your job title to fit the title of the job that you are applying to but to prepare for the interview you should have all of this information.

Once you are in the interview process it is even more important to keep notes and records. In preparation for the interview you want to research about the company and about the people that you will be interviewed by. During and after the interview, you want to take notes so that you remember what was discussed. These nuggets of information are going to be useful in the upcoming interviews. Often the first interview with HR can be more about you understanding the job than actually an interview. In proceeding interviews it is always a good idea to mention other people that you have met with to show that you are making connections within the organisation and that you are “fitting in”

The other main reason for keeping track of your applications is to improve your application process. Many people try to improve their applications by making gut based decisions. For example:

• “I didn’t land that interview therefore, I have to change my CV” or
• “I shouldn’t apply to that type of job because I didn’t get through the first interview”

Decisions based on gut feelings from one datapoint are inevitably bad decisions. If you want to really improve anything the first step is to measure it. Only then can we really see where we are going wrong. Questions that you should be asking are: “

• What is the ratio of interviews to applications?”
• “Does that vary by CV? Or Industry etc?”

So now that we know we should be tracking our job applications and using that information to improve our application process, what is the best way to do it? There are many options and it really depends on personal choice.

Tracking your applications through folders and files on your desktop

Some people are just traditionalists. They prefer what they know and love instead of having to learn something new. There is nothing to stop you tracking your applications with the tools that you already use. I’d recommend the following setup but the great thing about this method is that you can adapt it to exactly fit your needs:

• A main excel file with the following data.
  • Sheet titled Applications - Job title, Company, Application Date, Status (applied, interviewed etc. ), url of job offer.
  • Sheet titled Contacts - Company, Name, Email, Phone, Last contacted date, notes etc.
• An individual folder for each job with the following documents
  • Original job offer, copied and pasted from the offer.
  • CV used for application
  • Cover letter used for application
  • Notes

Tracking your job applications with Google Drive

Very similar to using files and folders you can also use google drive to track your job applications. The advantage of using a cloud platform like Google Drive is that no matter where you are you always have access to either make changes or to look something up. Maybe you want to do a little research while on a train journey. You can pull out your phone and check out the company's home page or the interviewer’s Linkedin profile and take notes on google docs. Then you can access that from your desktop computer when you are back home.

Another really great feature of using the Google Drive suite is that you can create links in your sheet that lead directly to a document that is the job offer or the CV that you applied with. You can create a separate doc for your notes and also link it to your main google sheet. These links might take a little longer to set up but once you do it it will make your life much easier. Let’s say you get a sudden call. You can easily bring up the relevant info to be prepared.

Here is a simple example of a google sheet for tracking job applications from spreadsheetclass.com

Google Sheet Job Tracking Template

Tracking your job applications in Notion

Notion has taken off as one of the hottest new tools. It offers a lot of the advantages of Google Docs being always online, accessible from anywhere and the possibility to link together documents to create something really powerful but it is almost supercharged. You have ready made templates that can give you a really full job tracking experience. This one by Andre Plaut even has a Kanban style way of looking at your job applications:

Here is a great template made by Andre Plaut

Notion Job Hunt Tracker Template

Tracking your job hunt with Work Hunty

If adding all the details of applications to spreadsheets or notion documents sounds like too much work there is an easier way. With Work Hunty you can install a chrome extension and then add jobs with one click right from the application page.

Workhunty gives you the opportunity to attach your CV or Cover Letter to the application and also add notes or contacts so you can easily access all your information about jobs and interviews in one place.

Finally, there is a dashboard where you can keep an eye on how many applications you are making and at what stage each one is in. This way you can improve your job hunt and land that perfect job.