3 Ways to Organize Your Job Search With Excel Spreadsheets

PUBLISHED 17 HOURS AGO

In today’s market, finding a job is frequently a difficult task. Combining thousands of job results from various sources and emailing hundreds of resumes might get complex quickly. Without the proper organizational techniques, looking for a job may soon become a complicated jumble.

Job searchers must maintain a well-organized job search to find a new employment opportunity. The procedure can be made simpler by categorizing potential employment, scraping the web to get a list of results that can be filtered, and automating emails. Fortunately, Excel has several functions to help you organize your applications and manage your search.

1. Classifying Jobs in Excel by Category
Organizing them by category is essential if your job search involves looking through multiple industries. You might not be contacted for an interview if you provide the wrong CV.

Add the job you are applying for to a running list in an Excel spreadsheet. Include the position title, the employer, the employment category, and, if applicable, your point of contact inside the organization.

You can use the positions’ categories to prevent errors in your subsequent applications. You must have a resume and cover letter for each job you are applying for if you are applying for more than one.

Either pre-create them and have copies ready to send or use Excel’s SUBSTITUTE function to generate them automatically.

You may make obtaining the appropriate one in the proper time more accessible if you have many versions of your resume and cover letter prepared in advance. Ensure you aren’t sending incorrect copies using a few nested IF statements or a straightforward SWITCH function.

You can retrieve links for resumes kept on another sheet using a function similar to the one described above. However, Excel makes creating a single template simple and then utilizing the SUBSTITUTE function to handle labor-intensive tasks.

You can rapidly design form communications by nesting several SUBSTITUTE functions into a single formula. One or more templates can be combined with various SUBSTITUTES, IF, or SWITCH conditionals to create an introduction or follow-up email.

2. Analyzing Collected Web Data in Excel
Most employment sites let you filter postings using a few specific criteria: title, location, and abilities. You may get the most out of each application by adding filters to those results.

Applying sophisticated filtering to a list of probable employment results is simple with Excel’s functions. You can only include jobs requiring a particular set of abilities or automatically exclude positions with salaries below a predetermined threshold. Excel lets you apply as many filters as possible to a dataset to get the most relevant results.

You will need a list of jobs from the numerous websites you are seeking to look through as your initial step. The quickest way to gather that list is by utilizing a web-scraping Google Chrome extension or program. Online, several excellent solutions are simple to set up and navigate.

Google Sheets has a built-in IMPORTXML function that can scrape site data if you seek a cost-free alternative.

You must import a dataset into Excel after you have downloaded it. Large scraped datasets can be easily imported into Excel thanks to its integrated XML importer. Use the available import features once you unlock the ribbon’s buried Developer tab.

3. Using Excel, send communications automatically
It’s hard to get a job in the modern job market without being able to send out a lot of emails. It’s crucial to have the ability to automate the procedure. Creating formal communication is a fantastic starting point. However, sending emails directly from Excel is your best choice.

In Excel, there are two different ways to achieve this. The more complex method uses VBA to construct a macro that can send emails from Excel. The HYPERLINK tool included in Excel is the quickest way to accomplish this.

Users can establish links using HYPERLINK to launch their default mail client and pre-fill a message. The send-to email, subject, body, and, if required, a CC for the email can all be filled out by the function.

When clicked, the Excel function will produce a link that launches your email client and contains the complete email you need to send. You will only need to press the transmit button at that point.

You can easily send out mass emails by using the HYPERLINK function and the automatically generated letter from above.

The tools in Excel can help you keep track of your job search and improve the likelihood that the relevant people will see your applications. Excel can readily help you with your job search, from swiftly developing form communications for each position to automatically sending emails.

It can keep your applications organized and filter potential job openings to ensure you’re only submitting applications for the jobs most directly relevant to you and your background.

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By Curt McPhail
Curt McPhail Executive Director