What is in the template
Every column earns its place by answering a question you will ask mid-search. White cells are yours to fill. Grey cells calculate themselves. One example row shows the format; type over it or delete it.
| Column | What goes in it | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Company | Who is hiring. | Sorts and filters every other column. |
| Role | The exact title on the posting. | Two roles at one company stay separate rows. |
| Level | Senior, Staff, L6, Director. | Shows when a company is quietly down-leveling you. |
| Job link | The posting URL. | Your way back to the description before each round. |
| Source | Referral, recruiter, applied directly, job board, network intro. | Feeds the interview-rate-by-source table. |
| Status | One of nine stages from a dropdown. | Drives the dashboard and the row colors. |
| Date applied | The day you submitted. | Counts applications sent. |
| First interview | The day the company first talked to you. | Your interview rate, which survives a later rejection. |
| Last activity | The last email, call or interview, from either side. | Starts the follow-up clock. |
| Days quiet | Calculated. | Days since anything happened. |
| Follow up? | Calculated. | Turns amber when a nudge is due. |
| Next step | What happens next and who owns it. | Stops a process stalling on your side. |
| Next step date | When it is due. | Sort by it every morning. |
| Contact | Recruiter, hiring manager or referrer, with email. | The name you need when you follow up. |
| Posted pay range | The range from the posting. | Your anchor when comp comes up in round one. |
| Notes | Anything else. | Questions asked, red flags, what to prepare. |
The Status dropdown follows a senior interview loop rather than a generic funnel: Saved, Applied, Recruiter screen, Hiring manager, Final loop, Offer, Rejected, Withdrawn, No response. Offers turn green. Rejected, Withdrawn and No response rows turn grey, so the live processes stand out. The posted pay range column exists because pay transparency laws in states including California, Colorado, New York and Washington now require many employers to publish a range. Write it down the day you apply. Postings change.
The follow-up rule built into the sheet
Days quiet counts from the last time anything happened on an application, from either side. The Follow up? column turns amber when a row at Applied has been quiet for 14 days, or a row at any interview stage has been quiet for 10.
Two weeks gives a hiring team room to run a full review cycle before you nudge. After an interview, ten days is long enough that a short note reads as interest rather than pressure. Send one follow-up, then one more a week later. After two with no reply, set the status to No response and stop spending time on it.
Keep the follow-up short. Three sentences do the job:
Hi Jordan, I interviewed with the payments team on the 30th and wanted to check on timing for next steps. I am still keen on the Staff Engineer role, especially after the conversation about the ledger migration. Happy to share anything else that would help.
Name the role, name one specific thing from the conversation, and ask one question. Then update Last activity to the day you sent it, so the clock restarts.
What the dashboard tells you
The Dashboard tab reads the Applications tab and calculates three things you cannot see row by row.
- Interview rate: applications with a first interview date, divided by applications sent. A rejection after the screen still counts as an interview won.
- Pipeline by stage: how many processes sit at each step right now, and how many follow-ups are due.
- Interview rate by source: referrals, recruiter outreach, direct applications, job boards and network intros, side by side.
The source table is the one that changes behavior. If referrals turn into interviews at 30 percent and job boards at 3 percent, your next ten hours belong to your network, not to another round of one-click applications. Most people never run that comparison, because a spreadsheet without a source column cannot.
The numbers mean little until you have about twenty rows. Check the tab once a week, not once a day.
How to set it up in Google Sheets, Excel or Notion
Google Sheets
- Click Make a copy in Google Sheets.
- Confirm the copy. It lands in your own Drive.
- Rename it, delete the example row, add your first application.
Excel
- Download the .xlsx file.
- Open it in Excel on Windows, Mac or the web.
- Save it to OneDrive if you want it on your phone too.
Notion or Airtable
- Download the CSV.
- In Notion, use Import and pick CSV. In Airtable, create a base from the file.
- Set Status to a select property and add a board view grouped by it.
The CSV carries the columns you type into. The calculated columns and the dashboard live in the spreadsheet versions only.
Where a spreadsheet stops working
A spreadsheet stores what you type into it. Everything on this page depends on you typing it, on the day it happens, during the weeks you have the least energy for admin. Most trackers die around application fifteen for that reason.
The bigger gap is the job description. Postings come down when a role fills, sometimes before your final round. If all you saved was a link, you prepare for the most important interview of the process from memory.
Skillora's free job application tracker closes both gaps. Paste a job link and it fills in the company, role, location and full description, and keeps the description with the application. It flags applications going quiet with the same 14 and 10 day rules. And when a row moves to an interview stage, one click starts a mock interview built from that exact description.