The job application tracker spreadsheet: seven columns that earn their place

The seven columns

Here is the whole thing, so you can build it now and read the reasoning afterwards if you want to. Open a blank sheet and put these across the top row.

That is it. Seven columns, about two minutes of work, and no template to download.

• Company: who you applied to.
• Role: the exact job title from the advert, not your shorthand for it.
• Job posting: the link, and the text of the advert pasted into the cell beneath it or into a note.
• Date applied: the day you sent it, which is the clock everything else runs on.
• Status: where things stand, from a short fixed list.
• Next action: the specific thing you will do, written as an instruction to yourself.
• Next action date: when you will do it.

Why the templates you will find ask for so many

A template is a product. It has to look thorough in a screenshot, because that is what makes someone download it. Columns are the cheapest way to look thorough.

But in a spreadsheet you type everything by hand. Every column has a real price, paid by you, every single time you add a row. A dozen-plus columns means a dozen-plus small decisions per application, at exactly the moment you are tired of the whole process.

So you skip a few. Then a few more. Then the sheet is half empty, and a half-empty sheet is worse than no sheet, because you cannot trust what it tells you.

There is one test worth applying to any column: does what I write here change something I do? Company changes who I follow up with. Salary range, on the day I apply, usually changes nothing, because I often do not know it and cannot act on it. One belongs in the sheet at that stage and the other does not.

• Ask of every column: does this change what I do next?
• If the honest answer is no, it is a field you will fill in twice and never read.
• You can always add a column later. Nobody ever adds one they needed and regrets it.

The column most templates leave out

Almost every tracker records what has already happened. Applied. Interviewed. Rejected. All of it is true, and none of it tells you to open the file tomorrow.

The fix is two columns: a next action, and a date against it. Then the sheet stops being a diary and becomes a list of things to do. Sort by the date and today's work is at the top.

Write the next action as an instruction, not a state. "Waiting" is not something you can do. "Chase if no reply" with a date is.

Five status values, not fifteen

Long status lists rot. You invent a new one for an awkward case, forget you invented it, and six weeks later the sheet has "Interviewing", "In interviews" and "Interview stage" as three separate things.

Five is usually enough: Applied, In progress, Interviewing, Closed, Withdrawn. If you need a sixth, add it deliberately rather than mid-typing.

It is also worth being clear that your status and the employer's status are different things. Workday's own documentation describes a set of hiring stages that sit behind whatever wording a candidate sees, and the label on a careers portal can sit unchanged for weeks while things move or fail to move underneath it. Your sheet should record what you actually know, not what a portal is displaying.

• Applied: sent, nothing back yet.
• In progress: a human has responded and something is happening.
• Interviewing: a date exists.
• Closed: rejected, or the role went away.
• Withdrawn: you stopped it.

Save the advert, not just the link

Job adverts come down. Sometimes within days of closing, often before you get to interview. A link to a deleted posting is worth nothing at the moment you most need it.

So paste the text. The whole advert, into a cell or a note attached to the row. It is ugly and it takes ten seconds.

You want it for two reasons. When an interview gets scheduled five weeks later, the advert is what you prepare against. And when you are tailoring a resume for a similar role, the wording an employer used is the most useful thing you have, far more useful than a generic list of industry keywords, because it was written for this specific job.

When a spreadsheet stops being enough

It is worth saying plainly: for a smaller search, a spreadsheet is completely fine. If you are sending a handful of considered applications and you open the file every few days, nothing here is broken and you do not need anything else.

It gets harder in three specific ways, and they all arrive at once when the volume goes up.

The first is that nothing reminds you. The date column is only useful if you look at it, and the weeks when you most need a nudge are exactly the weeks you avoid opening the file.

The second is that you cannot see what has gone quiet. Silence is the most common outcome of an application, and silence produces no row update, so the applications that need chasing are invisible unless you go looking.

The third is version tracking. Once you are tailoring your resume per role, you have to remember which version went where, and a filename in a cell is a fragile way to do that.

• Under roughly twenty live applications, a sheet is usually fine.
• The failure mode is not losing data. It is not noticing something has stalled.
• If you find yourself building formulas to flag old rows, you have started rebuilding a tracker by hand.

Whatever you use, keep the data yours

One reason people stay on a spreadsheet is that they can see the file and nobody can take it away. That instinct is right, and it is worth applying to anything you move to.

Ryzio has a job tracker, and since this is our site you should weigh what follows accordingly. Two honest notes about it.

It exports to CSV, so whatever you put in comes back out as a spreadsheet whenever you want it. It does not currently import a CSV, which means if you already have a filled-in sheet you would be re-entering it by hand. That may well be a reason to stay where you are for now, and we would rather say so than have you find out after an evening of typing.

The general point stands regardless of what you pick. Before you move a job search into any tool, check that you can get it out again.