You will build a tracker that shows every application, its route and its stage.
Four weeks into her search, Wei Ling could not answer simple questions. Had she already applied to that company? Which version of her CV had she sent the recruiter? Had the hiring manager at the software firm ever replied? She had sent applications from her laptop, her phone, two job portals and three recruiters, and the details lived in her memory and her email, which meant they mostly did not live anywhere.
A job hunt produces a lot of small events, and without a record it turns into a blur that feels busier and less productive than it really is. This exercise builds an application tracker: one sheet that shows every application, the route you used and where it stands. It takes about twenty-five minutes to set up.
Open a spreadsheet, such as Google Sheets or Excel, and create one row per application with these columns.
Company Role Route: direct, recruiter or referral Date applied Contact: the recruiter, referrer or hiring manager, if you have one CV version: the file name of the CV you sent Stage: applied, screening call, interview, offer, rejected or no reply Next action, with a date
The route column ties to lesson 5.1, Three routes in: apply, recruiter, referral. The contact column matters for recruiters, as lesson 5.2, Work with recruiters well, explained, so you always know who submitted you where. The CV version column uses the file names you started saving in lesson 3.4.
Keep it to one sheet. You can add more columns later if you need them, but the ones above cover what you need to see.
Now fill it in. If you have been applying already, log your last five applications. Your sent email will have most of the dates and contacts. If you have not started yet, log the first five you plan to send, with the stage set to "planned".
Use the next action column every time. "Follow up with recruiter on Friday" or "Ask Hafiz if he heard anything, 14 March" turns the sheet from a record into a to-do list. An application with no next action is either finished or forgotten, and the column makes you decide which.
A sensible rule for following up: if you have a named contact, follow up once, about a week after applying, if you have heard nothing. One short message is enough: you applied on a certain date, you remain interested, and you are happy to provide anything else they need.
Do not follow up repeatedly, and do not follow up on a blind application to a careers portal with no contact, because there is nobody to receive it. If a week passes after your one follow-up with no reply, mark the stage as "no reply" and move your energy elsewhere. Some will come back later, and you will be glad you recorded the contact.
This is where the tracker earns its keep. Every two weeks, count the applications and replies for each route and work out a reply rate: replies divided by applications.
Here are Wei Ling's example figures after her first four weeks. Direct applications: 14 sent, 1 reply, a reply rate of about 7 per cent. Recruiter submissions: 5 sent, 2 replies, 40 per cent. Referrals: 3 sent, 2 replies, about 67 per cent. Across all 22 applications she had 5 replies, about 23 per cent.
Small numbers like these swing a lot, so do not read too much into a single fortnight. But the pattern was clear enough to act on. Fourteen of her twenty-two applications had gone into the route that produced one reply. She cut her direct applications to the closest matches only and spent the freed-up evenings on two informational conversations and a recruiter brief. The comparison gave her a reason to change what she was doing, instead of just doing more of it.
Your numbers will look different. A strong match in a busy field may get good replies from direct applications. A career switcher may find referrals do almost all the work. The point is to measure and shift your time, rather than assume.
While you are reviewing, look at the CV version column. If one version is getting replies and another is not, compare them. Was the profile line different? Did one lead with a different result? Wei Ling noticed that the version opening with "supply chain analytics" got both of her recruiter replies, while an older one that opened with "operations executive" got none. She retired the older one.
A finished tracker has at least five rows with every column filled in, a next action with a date on each live application, and a note of when you will next compare reply rates by route. Set yours up in the activity and fill in your first five rows.
Set up the tracker from the course template and log your last five applications or your first five planned ones.
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