Organize the chaos of your job search

As a job seeker, you quickly learn that finding a job is a job in itself. 

Maybe it even feels like more of an unpaid internship than a job at times. 

The amount of time required to go through the interview process from application, interview, and offer with a large funnel of companies can be incredibly time-consuming. Some people who have jobs feel they need to quit simply to job search! And at this point, we’re still only talking about the job part of a career transition. Maybe you’re also moving out of state and coupling your job search with a home search in another city. Oh, and perhaps your planet is experiencing a global pandemic, and you’re adjusting to working remotely. Maybe. :)

It’s safe to say, there’s a lot more to career searching than just applying online with a resume.

With so many steps in the modern job application process, there’s no room for error. To be most successful and land a higher-paying job faster, you need to keep on track of all the balls in the air, respond quickly to everyone, and make it easy to update your champions on where you’re at in the search.

That’s where a job tracker comes in. 

With a job search tracker, you can:

• Get peace of mind that you’re never dropping the ball

• Organize everything in one place

• Work smarter, not harder

• Put automation software and data science to work for you

• Optimize your search

It may not sound very easy at first, but with the implementation of the right tools, like a job search tracker, finding a job can be easy.

The first thing you’re going to want to do is to get organized. Organization and scheduling are often more critical than most job seekers think. Sure, you can go to the grocery store without a shopping list, but then you run the risk of forgetting something or accidentally buying things that you already have at home. 

Similarly, you can go about your job search without any tools to help you stay organized, but then you run the risk of many things running amok. Forgetting to follow up with thank you notes, re-applying to the same job, missing an interview, yikes!! 

Candidates who don’t use a job tracker often miss deadlines, forget to check for openings at their top companies at a regular cadence, and even skip the critical step of writing a thank you note post-interview. 

These are make-or-break components of your job search, and you can’t afford to have an opportunity pass you by because of a lack of organization. 

The job search is stressful enough. Why add more stress by trying to remember every little to-do?

Maybe you’re currently keeping track of things with pen and paper on your desk. That’s an excellent start, but not using digital tools to easily backup your work is a dangerous game. This was me a long time ago, and it only took one cup of coffee spilling on my notebook to learn that lesson for good. 

Job search spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are a good start. Using digital tools is great, but spreadsheets can get messy and don’t have intelligence built-in. In particular, spreadsheets cannot guide your job search strategy, get a high-level view of your process, and hit the ground sprinting.

Even the “best” spreadsheets end up looking like a mess of bold and color-coded confusion that doesn’t feel good.

The job search is an iterative process where you constantly assess where you’re at and pivot when need be. Spreadsheets fail to provide a strong visual understanding of your progress, and there’s no way to see a “birds eye view” of where you’re at and what might need to be changed or reinforced. 

To visualize, a leads funnel should look like a funnel and not a table (spreadsheet). It is reinforcing the strategy of building a solid funnel of applications that ultimately lead to an offer. 

Spreadsheets are just that, and they are met with all the limitations of any other spreadsheet that you’ve worked on. Spreadsheets cannot correctly support an intelligent strategy of high-volume networking in conjunction with a good volume of applications. Without the ability to store notes, contact information, and other elements, you might end up with another tab in your spreadsheet to track networking activities.

Job searching is enough work as it is, there’s no time to waste on building a tracker. 

Taking time to set up a spreadsheet to work best for you is additional work and thinking you have to put in; this is a valuable time to reach out to employers. Alright, by now, you’re convinced that you need a job search tracker ASAP! We’ve got you covered on that. We genuinely care about your career success, so we even made it free for you. 

What is a job search tracker?

Imagine being lost in a sea of chrome tabs... one for the job posting, one for your text editor, one for your job search spreadsheet; there has to be a cleaner way to have all of these sources in a single view. Luckily for you, Placement has built the ultimate job search tracker. 

Think of a job search tracker similar to task management software but optimized to give you a competitive advantage in your career search. With custom software built to automate the tedious tasks of applying and offers custom job search algorithms, you’ll never want to go back to “traditional” job searching. 

To keep you organized, a job search tracker allows you to access important dates, contacts quickly, and notes specific to any role. A tracker also provides you with crucial information like location, salary, team size, and helpful links all in one convenient place. 

Utilizing a job search tracker to guide your search will enable you to stay organized while juggling networking, interviews, and applications as you narrow towards an offer. 

Placement’s job search tracker was built with the job seeker in mind with recruiter-approved tools proven to work. 

How does a job tracker work?

We utilize a flow similar to a Kanban board to help you manage and improve your work as you go. 

The tracker is split into the various stages of the interview lifecycle, providing you with a clear snapshot of your opportunities in progress. 

• When you first discover an exciting role, it starts in the ‘leads’ section of the tracker until action is taken. 

• Once you’ve applied to the role within the tracker, you can move that job card to the next stage, ‘Applications’. 

• As you hear back from the hiring team and get your first interview scheduled, now is a great time to advance the card to the ‘Phone Screen’ stage and jot down some notes as you prepare for that first conversation. 

• When you ace your Phone Screen and get moved to the next stage, you can move your opportunity to the ‘Interview’ stage. Here, you’re going to want to go deep!

• Finally, when that joyous moment arrives, and you officially have a job offer, you’ll advance your card to the final stage, ‘Offers,’ and begin negotiation. 

Now that you’ve got your job search tracker let’s go through how to use it in three simple steps!

1. “Fill your funnel” - Find unique jobs with Placement’s magic tools and add them to your tracker with one click without leaving the app. After rating some exciting opportunities, you’ll find them waiting for you under ‘Leads’.

2. “Apply with ease” - Placement makes it easy to get applications out with pre-populated correspondence for cover letters, emails, you name it. Quickly and accurately get through your applications with the power of software and spend more time preparing for interviews.

3. “Move it along” - Progress your job cards through the various stages of your tracker and as you advance through the interview process, keeping notes and working with your career coach along the way. 

The job search process can be long, lonely, and tedious… if you let it. Or you can harness the power of magic job search tools from Placement and get to work. 

Start with our free job search tracker and gain confidence in your career search once again. Build your pipeline, streamline your application process, schedule with ease, and never miss a beat. 

If you’re enjoying the power of our products, check out Pro and work with a Placement career coach who will join you on your journey.