Job Application Tracker
Project Overview
Background
The challenges in a job market come in different forms, whether it’s from the high number of talents that compete for a low number of positions or the evolving demands of industries requiring continuous skill development. In addition, external factors such as economic fluctuations and global events can impact job availability and create uncertainties in the employment landscape. Adaptability and strategic career planning become crucial in navigating these challenges, ensuring individuals can not only secure employment but also thrive in a dynamic and competitive job market. Based on that problem I came up with an idea to create a Job Application Tracker not only to excel in a job application process but also to become good at Microsoft Excel.
Objectives
The goal of this project is to increase Interview Rate by analyzing the job applications. We can achieve this by creating a dashboard that displays multiple metrics and charts. The dashboard should help us on:
- Describe the current effort of job applications.
- Guide self-development efforts based on the industry’s most required skills.
Results
Below is the view of the dashboard that describes how things are going:
As you can see the dashboard is already filled with job applications data. I have a 3.85% Interview Rate over 26 applications this pretty much gives us an idea of how do we perform in a job market. Why do we choose Interview Rate as KPI instead of Total Interview?
Interview Rate helps us quantify our quality in the job market by quantifying the higher number of interviews with the total applications. Without additional effort, we are sure gonna get more total interviews but you will approximately get the same interview rate. (See table 1).
| Total Applications | Total Interviews | Interview Rate |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 3 | 3% |
| 200 | 7 | 3.5% |
| 300 | 10 | 3% |
Unless you are lucky enough the Interview Rate stays the same. Now if we want to Increase the Interview Rate We can Increase the the Total Interviews per X Total Applications. How do we Increase the Total Interviews? not solely rely on applying more but also by improving and expanding our current skillset. But, what skills do we need to learn or expand? I made this possible by creating a bar chart on the right of the dashboard to show the 15 Most Required Skills. You can learn or improve from the top 4 most required skills (SQL, Excel, Python, Statistics) and then keep expanding toward the bottom like maybe learning something that you aren’t familiar with by taking courses or creating projects.
Now after applying for jobs because you are better at certain tools by showcasing them on your projects and know more about other skills like databases, ETL process, and SPSS you are more qualified for those kinda jobs that require you to learn those skills. After that, your interview rate increased from 3% to 5% means for 100 applications you got 5 Interviews, and for 200 applications you got 10 Interviews, and so on. That’s how Interview Rate is a better KPI in this case. But, of course, Improving your skills is not the only one that can Increase your Interview Rate there are numerous factors such as your resume, your projects, and networking can help you excel in the job market.
That’s all for me. You can explore more about the dashboard by downloading the Excel file or exploring different sheets by clicking the panel on the left. Now I want to share with you what we just learned from this project.
Key Takeaways
- Solely relying on applying more is not the best way to strive in the job market. Instead, we can also work our way by improving or expanding our skills, improving our resume, and engaging at networking events.
- We can save time by allocating our time to learn the most required skills in the industry and then work our way to expand our skills.
- The best KPIs are those that align with the specific objectives and strategic priorities of our project. In this case, while having more interviews (Total Interviews) can be achieved by applying more (Total Applications) it doesn’t align with our objective to maintain continuous development to keep excelling at the job market in the short term and the long term. So Interview Rate is the more robust metric that quantify our development effort.