You will be able to keep a tracker that shows every application, the route you used and its current stage.
A job hunt produces a lot of small events: an application sent late at night, a recruiter call, a referral promised over lunch, an automated rejection. Without a record, these blur together. The search feels busier than it is and less productive than it is, and the details you need when someone finally replies are hard to find.
Wei Ling, an invented example, was four weeks into her search when this happened to her. She couldn't say whether she had already applied to a particular company, which CV version she had sent a recruiter, or whether the hiring manager at a software firm had ever replied. She had applied from her laptop, her phone, two job portals and three recruiters, and the details lived only in her memory and her email.
An application tracker is one sheet that shows every application, the route you used and where it stands. Setup takes about twenty-five minutes. Use a spreadsheet such as Google Sheets or Excel, give each application its own row, and create these eight columns:
Company Role Route: direct, recruiter or referral, the three routes from Lesson 5.1, "Three routes in: apply, recruiter, referral" Date applied Contact: the recruiter, referrer or hiring manager, if there is 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
Keep it to one sheet. You can add columns later if you need them, but these cover what you need to see. The contact column matters most for recruiters, because, as Lesson 5.2, "Work with recruiters well", explains, you should always know who submitted you where. The CV version column uses the file names you started saving in Lesson 3.4.
If you're already applying, log your last five applications. Your sent email will hold most of the dates and contacts. If you haven't started yet, log the first five you plan to send and set the stage to "planned".
Fill in the next action column every time, because it 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. Entries can be as simple as "Follow up with recruiter on Friday" or "Ask Hafiz if he heard anything, 14 March".
If there is a named contact and you've heard nothing about a week after applying, follow up once. Keep the message short: give the date you applied, say you're still interested, and say you're happy to provide anything else they need. Don't follow up repeatedly. Don't follow up on a blind application to a careers portal with no contact, because nobody receives it.
If a week passes after your follow-up with no reply, change the stage to "no reply" and put your energy elsewhere. Some "no reply" applications come back later, which is one reason recording the contact is worthwhile.
Every two weeks, count the applications and replies for each route and work out the reply rate, which is replies divided by applications.
After her first four weeks, Wei Ling's direct applications stood at 14 sent and 1 reply, a reply rate of about 7 per cent. Through recruiters she had sent 5 and had 2 replies, 40 per cent. Through referrals she had sent 3 and had 2 replies, about 67 per cent. Across all routes she had sent 22 applications and had 5 replies, about 23 per cent.
Fourteen of her twenty-two applications had gone into the route that produced one reply, so she cut her direct applications down to the closest matches only and spent the evenings that freed up on two informational conversations and a recruiter brief.
Small numbers swing a lot, so don't read too much into a single fortnight. Results also differ from person to person. Someone who is a strong match in a busy field may get good replies from direct applications, while a career switcher may find that referrals do almost all the work. Measure where your replies actually come from and shift your time toward those routes rather than assuming.
At the same fortnightly review, look at the CV version column. If one version gets replies and another doesn't, put the two side by side and look for the difference, such as a different profile line or a different result at the top. Wei Ling found that the version opening with "supply chain analytics" got both of her recruiter replies while an older version opening with "operations executive" got none, so she retired the older version and kept sending the one that opened with "supply chain analytics".
A finished tracker has at least five rows with every column filled, a next action with a date on each live application, and a note of when you'll 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 the first five you plan to send.
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