Somewhere around application number fifteen, every job search turns into archaeology. Which version of your resume did you send them? Did you already follow up? Is the interview Tuesday with the company you researched, or the other one?
The problem isn't effort. It's that a modern job search is a pipeline of 20–50 parallel processes, and you're running it from memory and browser tabs.
One row per job, seven columns
The whole fix is a single tracker. One row per application:
- Company & role — plus the job posting link (postings get taken down; save it)
- Date applied
- Stage — Wishlist → Applied → Phone Screen → Interview → Final Round → Offer / Rejected
- Next step — the single most important column. Every row should always have one: "follow up Friday", "prep STAR stories", "send thank-you email"
- Deadline for that next step
- Contact — a human name beats a careers page every time
When every application has a stage and a next step, nothing goes quiet by accident — and quiet is where offers die.
Prepare interviews once, properly
Interviewers ask the same dozen questions in different outfits: Tell me about yourself. Why this role? A difficult project. A conflict. Your biggest weakness. Where in three years?
Write your answers once using the STAR structure — Situation, Task, Action, Result — with real numbers where you can ("cut processing time 32%" beats "improved efficiency"). Then per company, you only customize: why them, and two smart questions to ask back.
Unprepared candidates wing twelve separate interviews. Prepared candidates rehearse one framework twelve times.
Your resume: boring beats beautiful
Recruiters spend seconds per resume, and applicant tracking systems spend less. What survives both:
- Standard headings: Summary, Experience, Skills, Education
- No photos, no graphics, no two-column puzzles for online applications
- Keywords mirrored honestly from the job posting
- A file named Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf
A matching cover letter isn't a formality either — it's three paragraphs: why this role, your two most relevant proof points (with numbers), one specific thing about the company. Fifteen minutes once you have the structure.
The pack that holds it together
Our Job Search Pack bundles the whole system: the application tracker spreadsheet with stage dropdowns, an interview prep sheet with the likely questions and the STAR framework built in, two clean ATS-friendly resume templates, and a fill-in cover letter template (PDF included).
👉 Job Search Pack — $24 on Gumroad
Bring the effort. Let a system handle the remembering.
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