I tell the story every now and then of a job search early in my career.
I was looking to make a move out of my then-current role. I found a job I was interested in. I emailed my resume to the hiring manager (this was back before LinkedIn EasyApply or Workday or Greenhouse). I got a reply acknowledging receipt of my resume.
And then nothing.
Months later I got an email asking if I was available for an interview. And I had no idea who it was from or why they were reaching out to me.
It took long enough for them to get back to me that I had completely forgotten who they were or that I’d ever applied for a position there in the first place. I don’t remember exactly how – probably by going back through my email – but eventually I remembered who they were and went on to interview for the position and work for that company for awhile. If you look at my resume you can probably figure out which company it was but that’s really not important. I don’t tell the story to shame anyone on that side of things, I do so to highlight the necessity of keeping organized in a job search.
I’ve since developed a better system, one that has (seemingly) served me well in my current job search, and I figured it might serve others well also so I should share it.
I’m using a Trello board to track potential jobs. This should surprise no one given my over-use of Trello. It even gets a bit meta as some of the jobs I’ve tracked on the Trello board were at Trello itself. This is how it works…
Each opportunity is a card on the board and there are four lists, with cards (hopefully) moving left to right across the board. The first list is “Found” – where I note jobs that I’ve come across on various sites or social media. Next is “Applied For” which, as can be expected, is where I move cards after I apply. If I get at least one interview for the position, I move its card into the “Interview” list and if the interviews go well enough that I get an offer, the card moves into the “Offer” list.
There are a few exceptions to the above. One is that if I’m contacted by a recruiter out of the blue, I haven’t always tracked the position. There have been a couple times when I wasn’t actively looking for a job but a recruiter reached out, only for the company to not want to move forward with me. I never actually applied, so I never made a card. Similarly, if I talk to an external recruiter but never talk to anyone at the actual company, I don’t count that as an interview. Lastly, the “Found” column has a separator card, under which are cards for companies I want to keep an eye on but don’t have any specific positions to apply for, so these cards don’t fit the same format as the others.
In addition to the lists, I use three labels for denoting status. A red “Rejected” label means that, at whatever step of the process, the company explicitly told me I was not moving forward. A yellow “Declined” label means that, at whatever step of the process, I chose not to continue moving forward. A green “Accepted” label means I accepted an offer for that job (though I guess this could also be a fifth list). This allows me to get an at-a-glance view of what positions are still possibilities as anything without a label is theoretically something I’m still in consideration for.
That said, the sheer number of positions I’ve heard nothing about after applying in my current job search makes me think I might need to consider some other activity monitor.
But the important thing in this system is the card.
As I said, each card represents a job opportunity. The title is the company name and the name of the position. The card description is a link to the job application. Then I make comments for everything else I know or think about the opportunity. Why do I want the position? What do I like about the company? What concerns to I have about the posting? What version of my resume did I use and what did I say in my cover letter (both of which can also just be attached to the card)?
Did I choose not to apply after all? Why did I choose not to? (And, in this case, I archive the card.)
If I move forward, who did I hear from and what did they say? What was I asked in the interview(s) and how did I respond? How did I feel the interview(s) went?
I’ve gotten to this point through iteration. Originally, the card title was just the company name and I didn’t bother keeping any additional details. Over time I found there was more I wanted to track and the card provided a useful way to do so.
My goal is to not have to keep all of that straight in my head. I can have an interaction with the company, debrief myself via the card, and then if anything falls out of my head it doesn’t matter because I can go back and refresh myself from my notes. It also means that if anyone asks about the interview process, I can reference my notes to help them.
Secondarily, it allows me to pull some stats about my job search. I can see that X number of applications led to Y number of interviews. I can dive into my thoughts at the time of application and see when a rejection came on a position I didn’t really think I was a fit for anyway rather than one that I thought I matched up with well.
The goal of a job search is to find a new job and I don’t yet know if this actually helps with that. Anecdotally, though, it feels like it helps me learn from each previous opportunity and I’d like to think that makes me better prepared for each potential job going forward.
