I've been looking for a new job for a while now, and one thing I didn't expect was how quickly the whole process would become messy. Finding jobs isn't really the problem — there are plenty of them. I use LinkedIn most often, but I also check Indeed, Glassdoor, Wellfound for startups, and sometimes ZipRecruiter. I also find jobs directly on company career pages, through people I know, or just by coming across a company I like and checking whether they're hiring.

After a few weeks of doing this, I had jobs saved on LinkedIn, applications submitted through different company websites, recruiter conversations somewhere in my inbox, and interviews happening at completely different stages. Sometimes I'd find a vacancy that looked interesting, start reading it and slowly realize I'd already applied. Other times I'd get a message from a recruiter and have to search through my emails to remember what the role was, because the original job post had already disappeared.

At some point I realized I needed a better way to track my job applications. I started with a spreadsheet, which worked for a while, but eventually I wanted to understand more than where I'd applied. I wanted to know whether my job search was actually working, which applications were bringing me interviews, and whether the things I kept changing in my CV and portfolio were making any difference. This is eventually what led me to build AB Job.

My experience with LinkedIn Easy Apply hasn't been great

I still use LinkedIn Easy Apply sometimes because it's hard to resist when you've already spent an evening looking through vacancies. You find a role that seems relevant, your CV is already there, and applying takes maybe thirty seconds. Compared with opening another company website, creating an account, uploading the same CV again and manually filling in your work experience, Easy Apply feels wonderful.

The problem is that I can barely remember a time when one of those applications led somewhere. I might send five or ten Easy Apply applications, feel very productive for an evening, and then never hear anything from those companies again. This is obviously just my experience, and I'm sure it works differently depending on the role and industry, but I've personally had much better results when applying directly through company websites.

It's also surprisingly difficult to remember what you've done on LinkedIn after a while. I save jobs that I never apply to, open the same vacancy several times while deciding whether it's worth it, and occasionally discover that a job I wanted to come back to has already disappeared. Add applications from other websites to that, and LinkedIn's application history stops being a particularly useful picture of my actual job search.

I don't rely on one job search site

LinkedIn is still the job search site I use most often, mostly because of the number of jobs and because it's easy to check the company and the people working there. But I don't think relying on one platform is a particularly good idea, especially because after a while LinkedIn tends to show me very similar roles over and over again.

I use Indeed when I want to broaden the search, and Glassdoor is useful when I want to learn more about a company, check salaries or read employee reviews before spending time on an application.

Some of the most interesting jobs I've found haven't come from a traditional job board at all. If I discover a company whose product I like, I'll often go directly to its careers page and see what they have open. I also sometimes find roles through people I know or recruiters who contact me directly, so in reality my job search process is spread across a lot of different places.

That's where tracking becomes useful for me. I don't really care which platform technically stores an application; I want one place that reflects everything I'm doing.

I started with a simple job application spreadsheet

My first attempt to organize everything was a spreadsheet. I added the company, position, job link, application date, where I'd found the vacancy and the current status. There wasn't anything sophisticated about it, but suddenly I could open one file and see most of my job search instead of checking LinkedIn, emails and browser tabs separately.

I still think this is one of the best ways to track job applications if you're applying to a relatively small number of jobs. It's free, completely customizable and easy to set up. If you mainly need to remember where you've applied and whether someone has replied, you probably don't need anything more complicated.

My problem was that the spreadsheet required me to remember to update it. After spending time adapting my CV, writing something for the application and filling in yet another form, the last thing I wanted to do was open Google Sheets and copy all the information there.

Sometimes I'd tell myself I'd add it later, then forget which applications were missing. Eventually the spreadsheet wasn't showing my job search anymore; it was showing the part of my job search I'd remembered to record.

Then I realized that counting applications wasn't helping me very much

For a while, the number I paid the most attention to was the total number of applications. It felt useful because it was something concrete: I'd sent 20 applications, then 40, then 60. On a bad week, at least I could look at that number and feel like I'd done something.

But after a while I noticed that I wasn't actually interested in the total anymore. Seeing 60 applications in my spreadsheet didn't help much if 55 of them had gone nowhere. What I wanted to know was what happened after I applied: how many companies replied, how many invited me to an interview, and whether certain types of applications worked noticeably better than others.

For example, if I sent 50 applications and got two interviews, that gave me a useful baseline. If I then changed my CV, became more selective about the jobs I applied to, and got six interviews from the next 50 applications, I had at least some indication that something had improved. It wasn't perfect data and there were obviously other factors involved, but it was much more useful than simply knowing that I'd applied to another 50 jobs.

This also made me think differently about my job search strategy. Instead of trying to maximize the number of applications I could send, I became more interested in understanding which applications were actually worth my time.

I started treating my job search more like a funnel

Once I started paying attention to what happened after each application, the spreadsheet became much more interesting. I could look at applications, recruiter responses, interviews and offers as different stages rather than putting everything into one big list.

This matters because two frustrating job searches can have completely different problems. If I'm applying to a lot of jobs but almost never getting an interview, I probably need to look at what happens before the interview stage. Maybe I'm targeting roles that aren't a particularly good match, maybe my CV isn't explaining my experience well enough, or maybe my portfolio isn't showing the things employers are looking for.

If I'm getting interviews fairly regularly but rarely progressing after them, that's a different situation. Rewriting my CV for the fifth time probably isn't going to change much because the CV is already doing its job. I'd rather look at how I'm presenting my experience during interviews, which questions are difficult for me, or where exactly I'm dropping out of the process.

Before I started tracking my job applications this way, both situations felt pretty much identical. I was applying, getting rejections and occasionally interviewing, so my conclusion was usually just that the job search wasn't going well. Looking at the stages separately makes it easier to understand which part actually needs attention.

I also wanted to know where my interviews were coming from

This became especially interesting because I was applying through so many different places. I had a feeling that LinkedIn Easy Apply wasn't doing much for me, while applications through company websites seemed to get more responses, but without tracking them I couldn't really tell whether that was true or whether I just remembered the successful applications more clearly.

So I started saving the source along with the application. Over time, that makes it possible to compare LinkedIn, Indeed, Wellfound, company career pages and other sources based on what happens after the application, rather than how many jobs each platform lets me apply to.

I find the same approach useful when I change something in my job search. I've tried different versions of my CV, changed the types of companies I target and adjusted how selective I am about vacancies. Instead of deciding after three days that the new approach "feels better," I can give it some time and then look at whether my application-to-interview rate actually changed.

It's not scientific research, and I don't treat it like that. There are too many variables in a job search to conclude that changing one sentence in a CV suddenly doubled my chances of getting hired. But even imperfect data gives me more information than trying to remember how successful I felt a month ago.