How to track job applications

A job search becomes unmanageable somewhere around the fifteenth application. Not because it is hard work, but because you stop being able to see it.

What to record

Fewer fields than you think, but these ones every time:

• Company and role.
• Date applied.
• Which version of your résumé you sent.
• Current stage — applied, screened, interviewing, offer, closed.
• Date of the last movement, so you can see what has gone quiet.

The résumé version is the field people leave out and the one that makes the data useful later. Without it you can see that applications stall; with it you can see whether the tailored ones stalled less.

The number worth watching

Most people track how many applications they have sent. That measures effort. The useful number is stage-to-stage conversion: what share of applications became screens, what share of screens became interviews.

Because those two numbers point at completely different problems:

• Low applied → screen means you are not getting read. That is a document and targeting problem.
• Healthy applied → screen but low screen → interview means you are getting read and not landing. That is a positioning or interview problem.

Working on the wrong one is the most common way to spend a month and change nothing.

When the numbers mean nothing

A conversion rate over six applications is not a rate. It is a coincidence with a percent sign, and treating it as a signal will send you rewriting a résumé that was fine.

Rough guidance: below about fifteen applications, look at individual outcomes rather than percentages. Below about thirty, treat any conversion figure as directional at best.

Follow-ups

One follow-up, roughly a week after the stage went quiet, addressed to a person if you have one. A second follow-up rarely changes anything and a third never does.

The value of tracking the last-movement date is that it makes this visible without you holding it in your head.

Doing it in one place

ORQILO holds the pipeline alongside the résumé version you sent and the role you were targeting, so an outcome can point at a cause. Tracking is on the free plan; the pattern reading across applications is Pro.