This is a blog post in a series of articles about getting a job in tech. Confused? Here’s the first post
When you’re looking for a job there’s a lot you need to keep track of…. it kind of gets overwhelming. You quickly forget one thing or that one person you talked to, and up next you talk with another person at another company. If you have a poor memory like me, you’ve probably forgotten the first person you talked to you - and oh! Look at that! You join the company and you completely forget every single person you interviewed with and it turns out one of the people that you work with was one of your interviewers. Now you’ve just embarrassed yourself because you met them before and you don’t remember. How do you keep track of everything that’s going on? I’m going to tell you my secret - how I do it all.
For my job hunt process, I live on Notion. I created a custom kanban board for tracking the status of potential jobs. You probably want to see it? I’ve got you covered:
Here’s the link to my custom kanban job board.
How I use it: 🔗
I kept track of every interaction I have with every person at a company in each listing. Every time I send an email or speak to someone at a company, I always made sure to note their name, a way to contact them if needed, and what we talked about. This is important for later reflection as well as review before my next interview.
For every interview I have, I create a new page in the Notion listing to keep track of what we talked about and keep notes. If I have to write something up like answers to questions, write a cover letter, etc, I will create a page for the task and write notes in there.
I do this to have all my job application information in a central location. Even though I will run the answers through grammar and spell checking via a Google doc, having the ability to quickly search a central location (the Notion board) for my previous answers to questions is useful for reusing answers and references.
Activelty keeping notes during an interview is important - For me at least. I have a bad memory… normally you could ask me what I just talked about in an interview and I couldn’t tell you what was said. Instead, I will literally pull up my notes and read off what was discussed. I use the notes to remember what we talked about, and write down any questions if I think of anything.
As I am stepping through the interview process, I’ll move the listing for a current company to a certain column to update it’s status on the board. That way at a glace I can see my progress quickly with companies and how far along I am.
Notion 🔗
Try it out - click the link above and duplicate my notion board so you can learn how to more efficiently keep track of your interviewing experience!
