Whether you're a recent grad or someone trying to pivot their career, job hunting can be a daunting task. It's easy to get caught up and forget to organize your job hunt process when you're constantly saving jobs and writing a million resumes and cover letters.
I have found a system that has worked for me when it comes to organizing my job applications, and I wanted to share it in case anyone else needed some organizational advice.
FYI - the template I am going to share is from Notion, but I made some edits to customize it more for my job hunt and want I wanted to keep track of. This could still be transferred to Microsoft Excel, Google spreadsheets, or other organization tools you might use.
At the top of this template, you can see that there is a place for you to save your current resume and cover letter template, as well as your portfolio URL. After applying to so many jobs, you might find yourself with a large number of customized resumes and cover letters all over your desktop. I like using this to keep my basic resume and cover letter template in one place, and if I need to refer to it, I know right away where it is saved.
Getting to the actual spreadsheet, I like to organize it with the following columns (not all are shown in the above image):
Company Name
Stage of Application
Position
Contact Head of Department?
Response From Head of Department?
Date of Application
Resume
Cover Letter
Posting URL
Location
Company Details
In Notion, you can embed pages within the spreadsheet, so if you wanted to add more notes about the company, you could do that in the company name column by opening the box as a page.
The Stage and Position columns are set up as "Multi-select," which gives you the option to add multiple options into the column and keep track of your progress and the job title you applied to, such as the example images below.
The Contact Head of Department and Response From Head of Department columns are utilized to keep track of who I have reached out to and if I have received a response, or if I should plan on following up in the near future.
The rest of the columns are pretty self-explanatory. I find it helpful to have all of my resumes and cover letters that are customized for the company's role in one place, so I can easily access them in case they're needed to prepare for an interview.
Jotting down when you applied to the job can also help if you track the time it has been since you sent in the application and if you believe it is time to follow up in concerns with the application process.
Location can be handy if you are open to re-location and applying to positions in multiple cities.
I hope this provided anyone feeling overwhelmed during the job search a resource or guidance on how you can stay organized and avoid unnecessary stress during an already stressful time.
If you have any tips and tricks when it comes to keeping your job hunt organized, I would love to hear about them!
- Kaity
