SSA For Getting A Remote Job #4
Track and Reflect On Your Progress
100 job applications in 90 days. That was what my first summer as a college graduate looked like.
In that time, I landed 5 interviews and managed to get 1 offer. I didn’t start any of them, instead choosing to work somewhere I had worked before. I gave up on applying for jobs.
My biggest mistake in this time was not track any of my progress or reflecting on what I was learning. I could have learned so much that would have helped me then and since then if I had tracked!
If you’re not tracking and reflecting on your progress on your remote job hunt, you’re missing out on valuable insights you can use to get the job you want. Read on to learn about building a tracking system and habit that you can start using today to get better results in your remote job search.
Tracking Jobs
Start with the actual jobs you are applying to. Ideally you are applying to minimum 2 jobs per week.
You can put them in a Google Sheet, Excel Sheet, or better yet, an Airtable base. You’ll want to track the following data points about each job you track:
The Job Title
The Date The Job Was Posted
The Date You Applied
A Link To The Post
The Company The Job is For
The status of your job application
Tracking all of these will make sure you have comprehensive data about the job itself. It helps you spot patterns. It was interesting to see that the difference between the date I applied and the date the job post was made was relatively long. Seeing this, and that I got no interviews for jobs with long dates between posting and application helped me realize I needed to apply as early as possible.
Tracking Companies
It’s also quite useful to track companies that you apply to jobs for. You can track the following data for companies:
Company stage (Start up, scale up, SME, Enterprise, and Agency)
Industry
Number of jobs you’ve applied to from them
This will also help you spot patterns, particularly around the kind of jobs you are drawn to.
Tracking Applications
Finally, consider tracking applications. You can track:
Role name
Date you applied
The CV you submitted
People you contacted from the company during the application process
Any reflections you have about the application you made
This is where tracking is most useful. It helps you analyze what might have gone wrong during the application process and fix it as needed.
For example, you can take a look at the CVs/resumes you applied with, and examine how they might have been received. Were they too long? Did they contain any mistakes?
You can also look at the people you contacted. Were they helpful? How did you approach them? Could you have done something different?
Finally, each application can contain a general reflection on how it went. How suitable was the job for you? What feedback did you get? What did you do well? What will you do better next time?
Making the effort to do these reflections every time will help you gain insights that can truly boost your sense of clarity about how to approach your next job application.
In time, the efforts will compound, and you will land the job of your dreams.
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