Any Interview has usually at least 2 actors, interviewee (the person who get interviewed) and Interviewer (the person who conduct the interview) I would refer to the interviewer from now on as company and for interviewee as the candidate (You 🫵). Companies always track interviews to compare them candidates, collect feedback, learn from i, and document the process and evaluations from interviewers.
Why Tracking is Important?
Tracking interviews is important for companies, and in this article I hope to show you how important is it for you as well to record and track your interviews as a candidate, not only stages like (Applied, HR, Technical, and Result), but also more details as you will see in a bit.
usually when you start interviewing, you have so many calls with Recruiters and interviewers, not all applications are in the same stage in the same time, so whatever you learn from a call cannot be memorized easily, writing them down is very useful for many things:
- Check the overall process before each interview. ✔
- Preparing for the next one based on the extracted info from job post. ✔
- Very useful in the final stage and negotiations. ✔
- If you got accepted in multiple offers, easier to compare and decide. ✔
- If you are not accepted, all the info would be extremely useful in your re-application in the future for the same company. ✔
And much more reasons, will be shared later.
What/How to Track
I have been tracking my interviews for more than 6 years, in the beginning I was using the note app on mac on then I used Bear as a note taking app, and finally I moved to Notion, the things that you are supposed to track can vary from one to another, but I can give you my recommendations about important things to track that I am doing in my Notion template:
- 📝 Analyze the job post and extract important parts:
- Technical traits they are looking for
- Non-technical traits they are looking for
- Company values: so you can match it to your anecdotes
- 🤙 Your first call with Recruiter explicit and implicit agreements such as:
- The team that you are supposed to join (what they are doing and why they are looking for someone like you)
- Compensation range (Salary, RSUs, Learning Budget, Bonus Programs, and Perks) this is important during the negotiation phase.
- Title and Level that they are looking for
- How they reached out to you (Linkedin, blog post, meetup, referral) this is important to see where do you shine the most so you can focus on this medium later when you are actively looking for a job.
- the whole process, how many interviews? for how long do they last? how many interviewers in each?
- 👨💻 Technical interview: you are usually not going to write notes as you are in a technical interview, but I recommend to write the notes right after closing the call of the tech interview, you are write down things like:
- Technical questions that you remember, even the live coding issue (in case you are a developer)
- Stack used by the team (usually you are supposed to ask this to a technical interviewer)
- Some companies send preparation materials, it is nice to add that as well in the application page.
- ✅ You should as well record dates when have you passed or failed and in which step in the process and most important is why did you fail so you can learn from your mistakes.
- ❎ In case of failing to get an offer, I usually ask when can I apply again, and record that in the page.
Benefits I found in tracking
Before starting tracking my interviews, I used to write the bare minimum on a sticky note in front of me on the desk, some times I lose them or forget about them, as most of the time I do quite a lot of interviews at the same time, you can easily lose track of them.
But after I started tracking, I could easily find when did I fail and why, I could record everything that is important for this job application in one place, if the interview is done I can revise all the details about each interview before taking a decision to sign or not, speaking about title, salary, or team dynamics.
Some companies ask me to sign a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) prior my interview, that’s why I keep the interview questions for myself and never to share them in public, however when I failed to join some companies once, and I had the chance to re-apply, I simply look at the previous application log to see what they are focusing on during the interview and what did I do wrong, so I can study well this time, and that was like a magic for me (proven working for me), I learned a lot.
In some cases, friends of mine are applying to a company that I applied at before, I help them with some clues what to focus on and what is that company looking for, without disclosing any direct information or interview question that was extremely helpful for some of them.
My Job Interviews Tracking Template (Free)
After explaining everything I do using my simple Notion template, I shared that template with some of the people that I mentor, and after someone asked about a way to track interviews I shared a Notion template on X (Twitter) 🔗, and finally I decided to share it with everyone through a Notion Template Creator titled Job Interviews Tracking 🔗
Everything explained in this article and more can be found on the template, you can easily copy it 🔗 and start by filling your own parts, your resume, links for linkedin profile, and Github.
Features
- Unlimited applications: You can add as much applications as possible in a database that is sortable, filterable, and searchable
- Template ready to user:Creating a new Job application comes with a nice template split into important parts that you just need to fill based on the job itself.
- Preparation Kit is a section that has some interview questions that you can prepare for yourself and revise every time you have an interview.
- Tracking by status: If you are applying to multiple in the same time, keep track of the status of each application in a status view
- Attach useful links: Add links for the job posting, company values page, and any other useful links for that job
- Using Markdown: Notion is using markdown 🔗 styling of the text which makes it super easy to decorate or highlight notes.
- Customizable: as a notion template once you copy it, it is yours, just change the section names, or order as you like to make it yours ;)
And much more features that you can discover yourself by checking the template from here 🔗, please, let me know on X (Twitter) 🔗 if you have any question or suggestion, or let me know at least if it was useful for you.