You can create an electronic system for your job search activity in Excel:
|
First Name |
Last Name |
Title |
Company |
Source (How You Heard of Them) |
Current Status |
Status Date |
Follow |
First Contact |
|
John |
Smith |
Head of campus recruiting |
Company X |
Career services |
Résumé and cover letter sent |
9/23/10 |
Call after 10/8 to check on status |
9/1/10 |
|
Jane |
Doe |
Marketing associate |
Company X |
Alumni database |
Second email |
10/1/10 |
Follow up on request for info interview |
9/1/10 |
You can add additional columns as needed for fields you want to track. For example, you may want to include a Comments column and put notes or ideas there. As you add more contacts, sort by status date to see to whom you haven’t reached out recently. Then check the follow-up column to see if you need to do something specific or just reach out to maintain the relationship. The First Contact field shows the first time you reached out to this person, so you can see if you have moved forward since adding them to the list. In the case of Jane Doe, you attempted to contact her on September 1 and you are still trying to reach her for an informational interview on October 1. You need to try harder to reach her, or assume the contact is stale and find someone else to add to your list.
The preceding table was created in Excel. On the plus side, you can customize an electronic system:
- You can be flexible about what fields you want to add.
- You can format and sort according to exactly what you need.
- You can back up electronic systems.
Electronic systems do have downsides:
- You have to build the system from scratch.
- You have to know what fields are worth tracking.
- If your contacts have a lot of activity, your spreadsheet can quickly get crowded and disorganized.
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