Why job application spreadsheets fall apart
A spreadsheet does not fail because it is the wrong tool. It fails because the cost of adding a row is paid at the exact moment you are least willing to pay it — you have just found something promising, you are mid-read, and logging it means switching tabs, copying six fields by hand, and losing your place.
So the rows stop getting added. Not all at once: first you skip the ones you are unsure about, then the ones you will "definitely remember", and within a fortnight the sheet describes a search you are no longer running. From then on it actively misleads you — you check it, see twelve applications, and have no idea about the other nine.
Every durable system solves this the same way. Make capture nearly free, and let everything else be as slow as it likes. That is the whole principle; the rest of this guide is detail. If you want the capture half handled for you, jobo does exactly that, but the system below works with any tool.
Where a search actually leaks
The intuition is that applications are lost at interview. They are not — most are lost between finding something good and getting an application sent, which is the part no tracker measures unless you make it a stage.
The shape of a normal search
Numbers vary enormously by field, seniority and market, so treat these as orientation rather than benchmarks. They are here because most people wildly overestimate their own conversion and conclude something is wrong with them.
The nine fields worth recording
Anything beyond these you will not maintain. Anything below them you will end up looking up again, usually at the worst time.
- Role and company — obvious, and still the two people most often go hunting for.
- Link to the original post — the post itself, not the search results page you found it on. Posts come down; this is your only evidence of what it said.
- Where you found it — LinkedIn, a careers page, a referral, a newsletter. This is the field that tells you where to spend next week.
- Closing date — the single most expensive field to miss, because it is the only one that cannot be recovered.
- Salary as stated — write what the post said, including currency and whether it was a range. Not what you hope. This matters when you are comparing two offers under time pressure.
- Date applied — the clock every follow-up is measured from.
- Stage — where it actually is, not where you wish it was.
- Contact — the recruiter or hiring manager named in the post, if there is one. Half the value of a follow-up is having somewhere to send it.
- One line of notes — who referred you, what you tailored, what they asked. You will not remember in three weeks. You will not.
The deadline is the field people regret. Salary and title can be looked up again from a careers page. A closing date cannot — once the post is down it is gone, and so is the role. If you record only two things beyond the link, make them the deadline and the contact. More on why posts vanish in saving a job post before it disappears.
The stages that matter
Most trackers offer a dozen stages and most people use three. These seven survive because each one changes what you do next — which is the only test worth applying to a stage.
| Stage | What it means | What you do next | Typical dwell |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saved | Interesting, not applied | Decide within a week, or archive it | 0–7 days |
| To apply | Committed, needs a tailored CV | Block actual calendar time. This is where things rot | 0–3 days |
| Applied | Sent, waiting | Start the follow-up clock | 10–15 days |
| Assessment | Take-home or screening test | Ask how long they expect it to take before you start | 3–7 days |
| Interview | Talking to humans | Log every question you were asked, same day | 1–3 weeks |
| Offer | Negotiating | Compare against the salary you recorded at save time | 2–7 days |
| Closed | Rejected, withdrawn, or gone quiet | Note why if you know. Patterns show up fast | — |
What "gone quiet" means, and why it is a stage
Most trackers have no state for an application that simply stopped. So it sits in "Applied" forever, and your pipeline looks twice as healthy as it is.
Treat an application with no response fifteen working days after your follow-up as closed. Not because they definitely rejected you — sometimes a role is unfrozen months later — but because planning around it is planning around nothing. Move it out of the live count, and let the number you look at be true.
A weekly review that takes ten minutes
Once a week, same slot. This is the habit that does the actual work.
- Clear the deadlines. Anything closing in the next seven days: apply, or consciously let it go. Leaving it undecided is the expensive option, because it costs attention every time you look at the list.
- Chase the quiet ones. Anything applied more than ten working days ago with no reply gets exactly one follow-up. Template below.
- Close the dead. Rejections, roles you have gone off, and anything quiet for fifteen days past a follow-up. A tracker you dread opening is a tracker you stop opening.
- Read the source column. If four conversations came from referrals and none from a job board, that is not a mood — that is data, and it tells you where next week goes.
- Top the pipeline back up. Get live applications back to your target number. Doing this weekly is what stops the feast-and-famine cycle where you apply to thirty things and then nothing for a fortnight.
When and how to follow up
Ten working days after applying is the point where a follow-up is useful rather than pushy. Before that you are asking someone to do work they have not had time to do. Much after that, the shortlist is drawn and you are writing to a decision already made.
Keep it to three sentences: what you applied for and when, one line on why you are still interested, and an easy out. Reply to your original application email if there was one, so the thread carries the context. If there was none, the recruiter named on the post is the right person.
One follow-up. If there is no answer to that, the answer is no, and your time is better spent on the next application than on the third message. Two is the most that has ever helped anyone; three actively hurts.
Work out your own follow-up date
“Ten working days” is easy to write and irritating to count, especially across a long weekend. Put in the date you applied and this does the counting.
A follow-up that gets read
Short, specific, and easy to reply to in one line. Replace the bracketed parts and send it as a reply to your original application if you can.
Subject: Following up — [Role], applied [date] Hi [Name], I applied for the [Role] position on [date] and wanted to check whether the search is still open. I'm still very interested — [one specific line about the role or the team, not about yourself]. If it's moved on or isn't a fit, no reply needed at all. Either way, thanks for your time. [Your name] [Link to portfolio / LinkedIn]
Follow-up situations that need a different message
Spreadsheet or dedicated tool?
There is no universal answer. There is a decent test: which one will you still be using in three weeks?
- You want columns nobody else would think of
- You already live in Sheets or Excel all day
- You want formulas — conversion by source, days-since-applied
- You are applying to fewer than about fifteen roles in total
- You want the data somewhere you fully control, permanently
- Capture costs six fields of typing, every time
- The original post text is not in it, so a removed post is lost
- Nothing reminds you about a deadline you did not look at
- Duplicates creep in when the same role appears on two boards
- It quietly stops being true, and gives no signal that it has
Set up your tracker in fifteen minutes
These save in this browser, so you can leave and come back.
7 steps
Terms you will meet
- ATS (applicant tracking system)
- The software an employer runs their hiring in — Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday and others. Your application lands in one of these rather than in somebody's inbox, which is why the confirmation email is usually automated. You can often search them directly; see where to find jobs beyond LinkedIn.
- Requisition (or "req")
- The internal authorisation to hire for a role. A paused or cancelled req is the most common reason a live-looking posting goes silent — it usually has nothing to do with your application.
- Ghosting
- An employer stopping contact without a rejection. Common, and usually a symptom of an understaffed hiring process rather than a judgement on you. Treat it as a stage in your tracker, not as a verdict.
- Pipeline
- Your live applications, across all stages. The useful number is not how many you have sent but how many are genuinely still moving.
- Conversion rate
- The share of applications that reach the next stage. Worth tracking per source rather than overall — that is where it tells you something you can act on.
Reading your own numbers
After about twenty applications your tracker starts being able to answer questions. Three are worth asking.
Which source produces conversations? Not applications — conversations. If a channel has consumed a third of your time and produced nothing, that is a decision, not a disappointment.
Where do things stall? Lots of applications and no first-stage calls points at the CV or the targeting. Plenty of first calls and no second points at how you talk about your work. These are different problems and the fix for one does nothing for the other.
How long is your cycle? Median days from applied to first response tells you how far ahead you need to be applying. Most people apply as though the answer is three days and it is closer to two weeks.
Check where yours is stalling
Three numbers from your own tracker. The diagnosis comes from the ratios rather than the totals, which is why a small search and a large one can be equally healthy.
When a tracker is not enough
Tracking is a record of work you have already done. It makes you organised; it does not make you faster. If your bottleneck is that there are only so many hours to find roles, tailor a CV to each one and chase the recruiter, then a better spreadsheet will not fix it — you will just have a very well-organised view of a search that is too slow.
That is a different tool, and it is the other half of this problem.
Related reading
- How to save a job post before it disappears — why the link alone is not a save
- Where to find jobs beyond LinkedIn — the source column, in detail
- jobo — save and track from any site — free Chrome extension
- Wize — an agent that applies for you — the other half of the problem
Questions
What is the best way to track job applications?
One place, nine fields, and a ten-minute weekly review. Record the role, company, link to the original post, where you found it, closing date, stated salary, date applied, stage, contact, and a line of notes. The tool matters far less than whether saving a job is fast enough that you actually do it every time — a system you abandon at application fifteen is worse than a worse system you keep using.
The weekly review is the part people skip and the part that does the work: clear anything closing within seven days, follow up on anything past ten working days, close anything dead, and top the pipeline back up.
Should I track job applications in a spreadsheet or an app?
A spreadsheet is right if you are applying to fewer than about fifteen roles, want custom columns, or already live in Sheets. It falls down at volume because capture costs six fields of typing every time, the original post text is not in it, and nothing reminds you about a deadline. An app that captures a post in one click removes that cost. If you already keep a spreadsheet genuinely up to date, keep it — the best tracker is the one you use.
How long should I wait before following up on a job application?
Ten working days after applying, which is about two calendar weeks. Earlier and you are asking for work nobody has had time to do; much later and the shortlist is already drawn. Send one follow-up of roughly three sentences — what you applied for and when, one specific line on why you are still interested, and an explicit "no reply needed if it has moved on". Treat silence after that as an answer.
Two exceptions. If you were referred, follow up at five working days and name the referrer. If you interviewed, ask at the end when you should expect to hear, then follow up two working days after that date rather than on a generic clock.
What should I do when a job post is taken down before I apply?
If you saved the original text and link, you can still apply directly to the company referencing the role, the date you saw it, and specifics from the posting — that specificity is usually what separates a reply from silence. If you did not save it, you have lost the requirements, the salary and the closing date, and there is no reliable way to recover them. This is the main argument for saving a post the moment you see it rather than bookmarking it.
How many jobs should I apply to at once?
Ten to twenty live applications is where most people find the pipeline healthy and the follow-ups still manageable. Below that a single rejection swings your whole week; above it, the tailoring quality drops and the follow-ups stop happening — which costs you more than the extra applications gain. Volume is not the lever most people think it is: a tailored application to a well-matched role beats five generic ones by a wide margin.
What does it mean when a company ghosts you, and what should you do?
It means they stopped responding without sending a rejection. It is extremely common and usually reflects an understaffed or paused hiring process rather than a judgement on you — requisitions get frozen, recruiters leave, priorities move. Send one follow-up at the ten-day mark, mark the application as quiet, and after fifteen more working days move it out of your live pipeline so the number you plan around is true.
Which job application stages should I actually use?
Seven: Saved, To apply, Applied, Assessment, Interview, Offer, and Closed. The test for keeping a stage is whether it changes what you do next — if two stages lead to the same action, they are one stage. Most trackers ship with a dozen and most people use three, which is a sign the default was designed for reporting rather than for the person doing the applying.
How do I know if my job search is working?
Look at conversion by source rather than at your total. Three questions answer it: which channel produces actual conversations, where applications stall, and how long your cycle is. Lots of applications with no first-stage calls points at targeting or the CV. Plenty of first calls but no second points at how you talk about your work. Those are different problems with different fixes, and you cannot tell them apart without having written the numbers down.
Should I record the salary from a job post even if it is a range?
Yes, exactly as written, including the currency and whether it was a range or a single figure. Salary bands are frequently removed when a role is reposted, and you will want the original wording when you are comparing two offers under time pressure. Recording "£65,000–£80,000, stated in the post" is far more useful three weeks later than a remembered "about eighty".