Organize your job search pipeline with Trello Part 1

After working seven years supporting CRM systems, I've spent time with salespeople and picked up their lingo.  Buzz words like sales process, sales stage, and opportunity pipeline. A jobsearch is essentially a multi-stage sales process:  it involves multiple opportunities, each progressing at different pace, with appointments, email chains.  

​And with a lot of opportunities in the hopper, it can be hard to keep track of.  You need a tool.  You need a job search Trello board!   Wait what is that??

It's a visual representation of your job search opportunities.  You can pull it out whenever someone asks, "how's it going?"

Each job opportunity has its own "card", and they are arranged from left to right in the order of how far each has progressed.    The details of each opportunity are stored in the card.

This is loosely based on a kanban board, sometimes used for managing agile development.  (I deliberately blurred my information for privacy, but this gives you a good idea of the board.)

Here's a quick youtube from Trello.

Here's how I set mine up

Step  1: Before I signed up, I decided what the sales stages I wanted.  I chose lead, applied online/presented, phone screen, onsite interview, post interview follow up, and final status.

​Step 2: Go to Trello.com.  Sign up for a free Trello account with the big green button Sign up - It's Free

Step 3: Once in Trello, press the link Create New Board.  Give it a cool title. Press Create.

Step 4: Click on the link Add a list and add a list for each sales stage you made in step 1.  This is the column headers accross the top.

Step 5:  Then for each job opportunity,  I created a card.  Press the link Add a card. Add a useful title.  Drag the card to the appropriate sales stage.

Step 6: Add opportunity details to the card.  I add things like the hyperlink to a gmail chain, contact information, a log of anytime I call or interact with someone, a pdf of the job description.  Everything I might need all in one place.

Step 7: Once job search gets into full swing, this board becomes indispensable.  If you schedule an interview drag the card into the interview column.   You can whip out the pipeline to show nosy folks when they ask why you haven't found a job yet.  If you get a call about that thing you applied to last week you can look at the card and remember.

Step 8:  Remember to put Trello on your LinkedIn profile.  It's a good keyword to have  :)

Stay tuned for Trello part 2--email Trello to create cards for you...
Stay tuned for Trello part 3---use Trello on the go with your phone...