Stop Losing Roles in a Spreadsheet: CareerGru's Job Hunt Tracker

A job search is a pipeline, not a pile of tabs. Here's how the CareerGru tracker keeps stages, follow-ups, tailored CVs, and next moves in one place.

The typical hunt dies in three places: a downloads folder of half-named CVs, a notes app of "follow up Friday," and a memory that this role was "the fintech one." None of that is a system. A system has stages, dates, and one place you trust.

CareerGru's job hunt tracker is that place. It is free. Paid tools (checks, matches, letters, tailored exports) feed it. The tracker itself does not charge per card.

Think pipeline, not volume

Track roles the way you would a sales funnel:

- Saved: interesting, not sent yet
- Applied: submitted, waiting
- Interviewing: a human is in the loop
- Closed: offer, rejection, or you walked away

If you only count applications sent, you will optimize for spam. The useful numbers are conversion: saved to applied, applied to a screen, screen to a loop. When a stage keeps dying, the fix is usually the CV or the targeting, not "send 50 more."

What belongs on a card

Company, role, links, stage, and a next action with a date. That is enough to stop the Friday amnesia. When you have run a CV vs JD match for that role, the card can sit next to the score and the tailored CV you already generated, instead of a mystery file called `CV_final_v7.docx`.

Cover letters you save against the role live there too. Interview notes and a round number belong on the card, not in a chat with yourself.

Next moves, not a guilt dashboard

The account home surfaces a short list of next moves: follow-ups that are due, interviews to prep, roles you have not tailored yet, letters still missing. The point is not to shame you with 20 tasks. It is to pick the few that actually unblock the week.

Set a reminder on the card when you send. One polite follow-up after a week of silence is professionalism. A third message after they have ghosted is a tax on your attention. Close the card and spend the hour on a better target.

How this pairs with the other tools

1. CV Check: get a baseline document that scans.
2. CV vs JD: decide apply, prep, or hold before you spend a Saturday on a tailor.
3. Tailor and letter: produce the send, save them.
4. Tracker: move the stage when reality moves. Offer and rejection both count as closed. Record the outcome so you can see patterns.

A weekly 20-minute review

Sunday, not doom-scroll. Open the tracker. Move anything that is stale. Add at most ten serious targets for the week. Tailor only those. If a company has gone quiet, close it with a note. That note is how you stop repeating the same weak applications.

A spreadsheet can do this. Most people stop updating the spreadsheet. The tracker is useful because the rest of CareerGru already knows the match and the CV. Use it like an operations tool, not a graveyard of hope.

By Salman Akhtar. Run CV Check · Match a JD · Role guides