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Programming IT Technology

How Do You Manage Your Job-Search Info? 67

Posted by timothy from the just-keep-piles-on-your-desk-at-work dept.
bilsaysthis writes "Finding job postings, tips for effective resume writing and social networking tools to overcome the 'who you know' problem are generally available these days, but what about keeping track of all the information (jobs applied for, people contacted, follow ups, etc)? After looking I found people using all sorts of informal means (text files, spreadsheets, email folders, bookmarks) but nothing very organized or focused specifically on the tasks. What do you use?"
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How Do You Manage Your Job-Search Info? More

How Do You Manage Your Job-Search Info?

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  • Just a spreadsheet (Score:4, Insightful)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @07:47PM (#11451349)
    Company name, website, date, individual, position number, where I found it, link to the specific resume version & cover letter, date(s) of follow up, misc comments.

    I think anything more would be managing the database, instead of managing the job search.

    • I agree. When I was on the hunt for a job, I did only basic record keeping of this sort. While you do need to keep track of these sorts of things, you have to remember that your primary focus is finding a job.

    • Re:Just a spreadsheet (Score:3, Insightful)

      by caseydk ( 203763 )

      I already had an install of SugarCRM [sugarcrm.com] so I just used that.

      It's essentially the same thing, especially when you consider that what you're selling is yourself and your skills.
      • That's a pretty good idea, especially if you're applying for jobs in that niche - if nothing else it gives you a hook in the interview.

  • Well basically... (Score:5, Informative)

    by joto ( 134244 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @08:31PM (#11451639)
    Here's my way of doing job search.

    The following steps should'nt be necessary to do more than once per unemployment period. Preferably as early as possible, as it is the most guaranteed way of finding a job you actually like!

    1. Find companies that you know offer jobs you might be interested in
    2. Write a general application form telling them what kind of jobs you might be interested in, and why, as well as a copy of your CV

    Furthermore, these steps should be followed at least once a week:

    1. Find ads for jobs you are interested in (in newspapers, internet job database, unemployment agency, etc...)
    2. Read them
    3. If there are some of them you are interested, think you have a chance to get, and haven't already applied, apply

    Concurrently, the following steps must be followed every day

    • Check mail (yes, even snail-mail!), be available on phone (or at least check your answering machine)
    • If you are asked to come for an interview, say yes, take a note of the company, address, contact persion, time and date
    • If you have an interview today, take a shower, dress up somewhat responsibly, and try to be there on time

    Finally, a tip regarding CV's. It should be honest, to-the-point, and keep mostly only informaton of interest to the potential employer. E.g. If you are applying for a bodyguard job, make sure to cover all your military training in detail, but only briefly mention you PhD's. If you are applying for a job as a rocket scientist, you can do the opposite. If there are holes in your CV, such as periods of sickness, depression, etc, be brutally honest, and explain why.

    To keep yourself organized, you need a pen, and two sheets of paper, one with the names of companies you have already applied for, and another with company/address/contact person/date/time/ for interviews you have agreed to meet up for.

    If these steps are too complicated, and you feel you need a DBMS to keep track of you job-hunt, you are doing something wrong.

    • Re:Well basically... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sfjoe ( 470510 )

      Excellent post. I would just make one Yoda-like correction: There is no "try" when it comes to being on time - you MUST be on time. Leave early in case something goes wrong. A prospective employer does not care about a flat tire or a train delay.

    • Re:Well basically... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )
      If these steps are too complicated, and you feel you need a DBMS to keep track of you job-hunt, you are doing something wrong.

      If you're dealing with two or three companies, that's correct.

      If your scope is much larger than that, you need to keep track of it thoroughly and a database isn't that bad of an idea. You can be sure that any sizable company with more than a couple of positions available is doing exactly the same thing in regard to every interaction they have with you. So should you.

      Also, if you'

      • Thank you (Score:4, Informative)

        by Safety Cap ( 253500 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @09:45PM (#11452137) Homepage Journal
        Also, if you're only dealing with two or three companies, you may not be living in the real world.
        Please continue to dole out advice such as this. I need less competition when I am looking for a job and targeting a company. As more and more people scour want ads (success rate: < 1%)/online job boards (success rate: < 3%) and use the shotgun approach to job hunting, that means less people getting between me and the hiring manager.

        Please also direct job hunters to talk to HR departments. I hear if you get a post card from them, you are "virtually guaranteed" to get a job. Really!

        Thank you.

        • I'm not really sure what your point is. Who said anything about using a shotgun approach? In fact, who said anything about want ads or job boards, either?

          If you're looking for jobs and can't find more than two or three that interest you, you haven't been properly networking.

          The day I was laid off (after most of a decade), I had several colleagues and former bosses contact me to speak with me about positions I might be interested by the end of the day, without any action on my part. News made its way throu
          • I had several colleagues and former bosses contact me to speak with me about positions I might be interested [in]

            Bingo, we have a winner.
            Quite honestly, in the best of times this was the best way to get a job. Now, in questionably the worst times (in a decade or two) it is the only way jobs are landed 90% of the time. Without a personal recommendation from someone on the inside, generally, you aren't getting hired.

            This is how I got hired, five of the last ... five times. Damn, come to think of it, eve
    • Post a copy of your most recent resume to a number of major job sites.

      That will get your contact information and other relevant things in the hands of people you may not know about who are actively searching for matching applicants online.

      Most of the serious interviews that I had during my 32-month unemployment period were initiated by someone else who had seen a copy of my resume on a site like Monster, Dice, America's Job Bank, etc.

      Just two cents from someone who has been through this whole process rec
      • Pffff.... it's pointless to keep people's contacts nowadays. Everybody moves, changes address, changes jobs every 3 years nowadays. That's the industry standard, especially for IT.

      • On the topic of job sites, I just had a freaky moment about half an hour ago. (names of places have been removed)

        I went to send a fax to a recruiting place in Location A (for a job I had seen posted previously). I couldn't send the fax - no dial tone.

        In fact, none of the phones had a dial tone. I went to get my cell to call the phone company, and the land line rings.

        It's a recruiter from the Location B branch of the same firm calling to ask if I was still seeking employment because she'd seen my resu
    • "Finally, a tip regarding CV's"

      Tip regarding CVs: try to be polite to the people who insist that you buy an expensive proprietary word processor running on an expensive proprietary operating system to write your CVs in, when they can't even be bothered to view the PDF file that you sent them.
      • AGREED. Seriously folks, if they won't take anything but MS word, you know you are talking to people who don't know shit about technology.

        I've run into this problem repeatedly.. if you get desperate, use photoshop or similar to turn your pdf into a png or gif, and then paste the _image_ into word and you have a word doc with little extra effort. Mac users should use TextEdit rather than word.
        • Have to agree and disagree about the MSWord fixation. It does NOT telegraph the incompetence of the organization or department or manager for which you may work, just that of the of HR departments and headhunters. It is typically these middle-persons who have no computer skill beyond MS Office but need a unified tool with which to scan a bazillion pages of resume a week.
          The real reason for lowering your expectations when a prospect insists on the MSWord form of your CV is that you now know that you are ei
          • Word is ubiquitous whether we like it or not. Thus, a requirement that your resume/CV be in Word format is not an effective litmus test as to whether it's ultimately someone you want to work for.

            A much better litmus test is to put something in your resume that won't get picked up by a blind keyword match. For example, I have a section, in bold type right at the top, that says I cannot relocate. If someone contacts me for a job out of state, then I know they didn't really read my resume. They're just tr
  • If you get enough response to have anything to manage, I salute you. Dump 200 résumés out there -- do you get more than 1% response? Most don't even get a automagic thank-you back.
    • It depends what are you called. There is a large number of UK agencies where you have to be called appropriately. John Smith or Vinod Patel usually does nicely. If you are called something inappropriate which sounds Polish, French or god forbid eastern European you have no chance in getting a responce whatsoever.

      So here is what I usually do: if I do not get a responce from a place on more then 5 applications I also send a revised version of my CV with a fake Indian or British name (a random permutation of
      • If you get no response using your real name (presumably you have a non-Anglo Saxon or non-Indian surname), yet you get an immediate responses when you use English or Indian names, then you should immediately inundate them with thousands of variants of the successful name, all with identical or nearly-identical cv.

        For example, if Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov does not work but Hubert Penniweather does, then generate hundreds of "similar" names such as Hughie, Huguenot, Huffy, etc. Their personnel people wi
  • [points to head]

  • Wiki (Score:5, Informative)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @08:45PM (#11451736)
    I installed a wiki on my main desktop about a year ago. I manage everything with it, including job-hunting, resumes, contacts, reminders. There are many wikis, but I found Twiki [twiki.org] to be the most powerful and flexible with the most features. If you're stuck on Windows, you can even install Apache and Cygwin so that you can use Twiki on it. There's even full instructions on their site walking you through that process.
    • how is that really different though from using a spreadsheet or just a plain text file? except that you're installing a frigging webserver for the job..

      • If said webserver is publicly net accessible, you have access to your info in lots of places. Now, perhaps making a desktop machine publically accessible isn't the wisest of ideas, but that's another issue...
      • Wiki's are pretty flexible. I wish I could find a basic Wiki that didn't need a webserver, yet had a good feature set (there probably is one, I haven't really looked too hard). I use a big text file for "logs" of work done for clients. It's getting unwieldly now that it's rather big because it's one dimensional. Sure there is text search, but can you really remember the exact spelling of a company name or a task? At least a Wiki implies that some meta data is recorded - related pages and the time the p

  • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) *
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:My technique. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )
      You have to remember that a lot of geeks spend weeks writing software just to catalogue their DVD collection. It's only natural to feel compelled to extend that to jub hunting (and everywhere for that matter). It's just a quirk.

      • Re:My technique. (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Seumas ( 6865 )
        An additional thought on this:

        When you're unemployed, you may often feel like you have less control over your life and your future. You may feel uncertain, uneasy and stressed. I think that putting a lot of effort into structuring your job hunting and every possible aspect and detail involved is a way for many people to feel that they have more control over their destiny. It gives them a sense of self-control and a way to measure their progress and goals.

        It may not be directly productive or useful in some
        • When you're unemployed, you may often feel like you have less control over your life and your future. You may feel uncertain, uneasy and stressed.

          And this is different to being employed how?

          • Oh, right. I forgot this was 2005. :D
            • It has less to do about a calendar date and more to do with the character of the powerful people making the decisions that create the uncertainty, many of whom have little regard for the lives they are entrusted with. People will work themselves hard for those they trust.

  • Save Everything (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fussbudget ( 852691 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @09:59PM (#11452245)
    Print out (and save)a copy of the job advertisment that you are applying for. Wwhen I was laid off and searching for a job, I received a call about a position that I had applied for 2 months before. Before going in for the interview I had a chance to research the company refresh myself on the skills thaat they wanted. I ended up getting the job.

  • You have a problem? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @10:10PM (#11452323) Journal
    I send out my resume... ...no, wait, I fill out yet another dumb form while my resume sits and collects virtual dust... ... and just carefully file all the lack of responses (even automated ones!) in my brain.

    So far the only danger of this is that it tends to result in lowered levels of certain vital nuerotransmitters, which manifests as "depression".

    To answer your question, I have no idea what people do; I had no idea that people were getting so many offers and interviews they needed special tracking software. My system seems to be working pretty well, at least in the sense that no system could possibly be more useful for me.

    (What do you do when even networking fails? I have a network, but it consists of people who have work or know people who have work in the theoretical sense of "Gee, it'd be nice if we could do X", but can't scrape together any money for it.)
  • Instead of building a database for this, how about just get a big binder/folder and sections for different job positions?

    That is unless you have 200 positions you are applying for. In which case, there is something wrong with your method. It's better to focus on a few good jobs than to go apply for everything and anything.

    Best of luck.

    • how about just get a big binder/folder and sections for different job positions?

      You mean, kind of like a database? :P
    • That is unless you have 200 positions you are applying for. In which case, there is something wrong with your method. It's better to focus on a few good jobs than to go apply for everything and anything.

      Focusing on a few good jobs is a great idea if you're willing to let your job search last quite a while. The area that I live in is bleeding dozens of highly qualified technical people into the job market every month (with a few thousand dropped into the job pool just a year ago). There aren't enough jobs

  • In Yahoo! Mail, I toggled that all sent e-mail gets put into a "Sent" folder. This was somewhat useful in tracking who I didn't follow up with, etc.

  • Indeed.com (Score:4, Interesting)

    by taylors1 ( 852715 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @12:47AM (#11453149)
    With http://indeed.com/ [indeed.com] you can search jobs across multiple job sites in one search. The byline is 'one search. all jobs'.
  • I'm looking myself for a job and now that I've read everyone's posts about this subject I've thought about something myself. Get a blog like Live journal and make all you entries private and in the subject line put the name of the company and position. I know LJ doesn't search very well but this is what I use and just put two and two together. I use semagic to post to LJ and its quick and gets the job done. OH and later some other time you can back up you Journal into a format you choose. I'm hyperverbal777
  • Unless you're doing a nation-wide search, there just won't be that many jobs that you realistically qualify for that you'd need a dbms. (Spamming your resume far and wide for things you barely have a single buzz-word in common with is pointless and just makes you appear desperate and undesirable like all the others that do that.)

    With a simple text editor, I keep track of:
    company name
    email addy
    web site
    what part of town they're in
    job title
    job description (buzz-words)
    my approx. degree of fit
    dated hist

  • For important stuff, I always resort to pen and paper, and a nice two ring binder. Things don't end up "lost" that way... :D
    • I agree. I also find it easier to write on paper while I'm speaking on the phone to a prospective employer; the sheet can then be inserted into the appropriate place. It is also convenient for placing interview notes and job description printouts. In all cases, it's more straightforward than retyping everything into a db.

      However, I usually keep the actual (tailored) resumes and cover letters on the computer in both text and word processor formats (with floppy backups in the binder).

      The binders I keep f

  • The job fairs are worth the time to go to, at least for some markets.
    But really, aren't the 'inside jobs' the best?

  • Personal Analog Assistant (Score:3, Informative)

    by sysadmn ( 29788 ) <sysadmn AT gmail DOT com> on Monday January 24, 2005 @09:17AM (#11454931) Homepage
    All my previous job searches were in the era before Monster, DICE, Hotjobs and all the rest. So take this with a grain of salt. You can accomplish the same thing by creating a directory structure and a todo-list.

    I bought a plain old binder, punched notebook paper, a page that held floppies, and a set of dividers. Label Dividers "Todo", "Open", "Inactive", "Raw Materials".

    Each company you're interested in gets a sheet of notebook paper. Glue the ad (or printed online job spec) on the paper. Use that paper to WRITE DOWN every action you take - when you applied, when they called or ding'ed you, etc.

    If you need to take action, that company's packet goes in "TODO"; if you're waiting on them, it goes in "OPEN". If they've indicated they're not interested, it goes in "INACTIVE". If you run across a good article on cover letters, a new search site, or whatever, it goes in "Raw Materials".

    Make a copy of everything you create on a set of floppies. Use those floppies as templates so you're not starting from scratch each time.

    • Quick hints:
    • Tailor your resume and cover letter for every job you apply for.
    • If you get an interview, walk in with a list of the 10 accommplishments in the last year. Tailor this list so the interviewer understands what you can do for him or her.
    • Submitting a resume is not a fire and forget action. You need to follow up with a phone call, email or other action. You need to Check back on a period basis until you get a response, or give up on that job.
    • ...that "Submitting a resume is not a fire and forget action", I found during my lengthy period of unemployment that there were many companies which would provide no contact information at all, and some which explicitly stated that phone calls and other personal solicitations related to the jobs being posted on their web site were strongly discouraged.

      In some of those cases I followed up anyway, since I knew something about those companiesor was able to find contact information by other devious means, and
      • I was going to post something similar but decided against it. I find it kind of weird that a lot of places seem to want a "file and forget it" approach, but they do for some reason.

        Aparently the HR drones are getting snarky.
        • Often in smaller organisations it isn't HR drones doing the recruiting - it is (senior) tech staff.

          So, let's put yourself in their position:

          You already have a day job programming, you and your team are already overworked due to being understaffed (obviously), and you are probably also behind schedule and over budget. You don't want to be interrupted whilst doing the day job and you want to try to orgainse the recruitment work into particular timeslots. So, you want cvs electronic for ease of organisatio
      • One guy actually yelled at me for bothering him in his office during business hours

        Just think...You could have been working for that guy. Sounds like you lucked out.

  • After going through the process myself, I would advise using a CRM software solution. Keeping track of opportunities, leads and contacts is essential in a good job search. This class of software lends itself to that.

    I will admit that it doesn't do it perfectly, but it is a whole lot better than using a wiki to keep track of every bit of information that you can think of.

    Sugar Sales [sugarsales.com] is a great place to start. I like it and have found it very useful! (It's a OSS project)

  • A simple black book style journal works best for me. PDAs can't display enough information on their screen, and I ain't carrying my laptop around with me.

    I journal everything I work on in date order in the book.

    "work on" is defined as:

    -talk to someone

    -send a resume

    -get an interview

    -notes from that interview

    -etc.

    Not journalled:

    -postings that I read that I discarded

    -other items that I saw but did not act upon

    Bonus: journal comes in handy for the next roiund of job-hunting, you can see where you

  • I have records of job searches and results going back to 1991.

    I use a few different ways of keeping track of various job hunts, client searches, proposals and anything relating to work.

    I have a big spiral bound notebook I bought in 1991, and wrote a big title on the bright red covers "Job Log". I have sections for each year I was actively searching for a job. Each phone contact merits at least one line, typically 2. Date & time, name of company, person talked to, phone number (so useful to not have to
  • I've been actively trying to get unemployed for the past couple years, but I keep getting calls from recruiters offering more money, and I end up going back to the cubicle farm. My one weakness is that I can identify is that when I go into interviews I wan the people to like me, even if I don't want the job. And then the recruiter calls me back and quotes me a number and I say I'm busy and he quotes me another number and I say I need more time off and usually about the third number I say, okay, give me a
  • I keep two parallel histories:
    1. job search results cut from Dice, Monster, and all othe sources into a text log...its searchable via editor that way and automatically indicates freshness-of-lead by file position.
    2. a text file log of tries and responses, mostly as pasted from e-mail but sometimes just notes taken from conversations and contacts. Also searchable and editable as I revisit some prosects that take time and a series of contacts and overtures to warm up, invite an interview, and reject me because
  • I do NOT wait to hear of a specific opening - I want a fresh resume to be in the agency database when a job requisition is sent to the recruiter. Agencies look at their database first, so they can impress the client with how fast they can find talent. They only advertise the openings if they can't send over as many interviewees as the client requests.

    I use a spreadsheet with the following columns:

    Company name

    Contact name

    e-mail address

    Phone number

    Fax number

    Physical address

    Resume sent (checkmark)

    F

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