Two Ways To Stay Organized During Your Job Hunt

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Looking for a job is an overwhelming, stressful, and time-consuming process. From the initial conversation with a recruiter up until the final interview a lot of information is circulating between you and them.

Without an organized approach, this job searching process can become even worse and we definitely don’t want that.

Keep Track on Spreadsheets

On your preferred spreadsheet tool (Google Sheets, Excel, etc.), you can get started by creating columns and title them as follows:

• Company Name
• Job Title
• Date Applied
• Status Indicator drop down (Applied, Rejected, Interview 1, etc.)
• Job Posting Link
• Job Description
• Recruiter Name
• Recruiter Email
• Hiring Manager
• Other Contacts (team members you meet, people you know who already work at that company, etc.)
• Job Description Keywords (use these keywords to adjust and cater your resume to that job posting to increase likelihood of getting through to interview process)

I’ve found that the above list captures most of what you need to know and keep track of. The idea with this format is that each job posting will be a line item and you can easily keep track of the various interviews you’re having.

Example of my job hunt spreadsheet tracker

The status indicator column, in particular, has been game-changing because it makes it easier to track where I’m at in the process and because it’s on a spreadsheet, I can filter out jobs that are no longer relevant without deleting details that might be helpful later on.

Create Question Banks

Question banks are simply a collection of questions. These collections will be helpful to keep track of questions you want to ask the company, and the questions they’ve asked you.

A Company Question Bank should include any question you want to ask the company. You can categorize them by intended audience; for example, some questions you have for the hiring manager won’t be the same as the questions you have for the recruiter or team members. Alternatively, you can also group them by theme, such as company culture or day-to-day work.

Similar to the company question bank, a Personal Question Bank instead focuses on questions you are asked and the answers you have for others. Most often than not, we’re asked common behavioral questions like “tell me about yourself”, “why do you want this job?” or “tell me about a time”. You can add these questions in column 1 and in column 2, you can type out a skeleton guide to help answer those questions. This sheet will also helpful for practicing before the interview!

Whether it’s your first time searching for a job, or you’re an experienced job hunter, I hope that this gives you a different way to approach finding a job and hopefully makes this process a little less overwhelming!

Let me know below: what has helped you in your job hunt? Do you organize yourself in a similar way?