Job Search Dashboard

I think I found the ideal tool for creating a useful dashboard for a job search!

The last time I conducted a full-on job search I looked for a tool that could give me immediate access to all the various things I would need in critical situations. I tried to build a tool without distracting too much from my mission. I wasn’t satisfied with what I came up but once I found the job it didn’t matter anymore and I dropped my (secondary) quest.

A useful dashboard would provide several dimensions of support for a job search:

• A hierarchical view of activity triggers
• A single place to capture and display data about opportunities
• A display of the progress and status of opportunities
• Consistent, adaptive UI on PC and mobile devices

So, yes, I am actively seeking a new job as I write this post. Maybe more on that later. I renewed my quest and found the platform I was looking for: Notion

What has me high on Notion is that it hits a sweetspot between flexibility and power/control. Most of what you see in the screenshot is based on existing templates others created that I adapted to my needs. Things I don’t want to mess with, like the Left menu, come free and grow with my implementation automatically.

The buttons are all copies of an original example template. I set the icons and colors and links and layout.

The Prospects table is live and I can (and did) add more fields to capture data and build in links etc that I want. The layout is dead simple drag-and-drop Flex. It can trigger reminders to follow up after a few days using a script.

The Daily Musts section is based on a grid table template I copied in. I changed the names of the fields and started using it immediately.

The calendar peeking in from the bottom is my Google Calendar embedded and styled to match the look with some properties using an extension. Dropdown selectors come pre-populated with examples which you can change on-the-fly to what you want to use.

I will probably tweak this a little as I use it in more situations, but I think it is pretty close to balanced for what I wanted for the amount of time and money invested: about 2 hours and no money.

Some other benefits: I can run it as an app on my laptop. I set it as the default new tab in Chrome. I can edit a draft of my resume from Google Docs by scrolling further down – every recruiter wants something different and I can do a lot of the changes live and save off a copy very soon after a call. And I can use it for anything else I want a dashboard for.