Organize Your Interview Processes with Notion

Because I don’t know about you, I get lost really easy

Photo by Nastuh Abootalebi on Unsplash

After my last conquest to find a new job, I used Notion to organize myself with all the interview processes.

When you are actively looking for a new job, you will send several CVs using some platform, like LinkedIn, so you may lose track of your applications, here I will show you how you can better organize your interview processes using Notion, then you can better visualize how are the processes. Don’t worry, I will share the template with you.

Defining the steps

For me, it’s important to define the general “steps” that each process will take, from application up to offer or decline. So, let's first define the basic ones. Also, it's necessary to define one more thing since I work as a Software Engineer, then I will add one.

• Application: Here you are applying for a new position
• First Contact: When you have the first contact from someone inside the company or a recruiter (it also can be before the application in case of the recruiter)
• Interview: Here is the start of the process itself, with an interview from one person inside the company (in case of direct application, the first contact is an interview directly, usually with HR)
• Technical Test: For me, it’s the most important one, a technical test where I have to code something, but if in your field you have such step, consider this one too
• Last Interview: Not mandatory, but sometimes you will talk with some upper manager of the company, such as the CEO
• Offer: After all steps are done, you will receive an offer, it is not necessary to accept right away, but here you will add information about the offer
• Company Declined: Here you will put all companies that said No in any of the steps before
• Refused: When you receive an offer by you decided to politely refuse it

So, after defining all steps you can create a new page in notion with a board inside, defining for each group (or columns) each step

Job Process Template

Now, one of the most important things is, you have to define a template, which you will add the information of the company, since this is a board, you can add properties, which will be helpful if you need to search for information.

Properties

For me is important to have as much information as possible about the Company and the Job Description. So I can better study and understand the expected job position.

The basic properties I like to define are, it’s important to know that the title you can anything you want, but I like to put the company name:

• Company Name (text type)
• Company Site (URL type): URL of the company website
• Status (select type): The columns from above (it's possible that you have to type those manually here)
• Position (text type): Position name you are applying
• Job Description (URL type): The link of the job description you're applying
• Salary Range (text type): The Range of salary the company asks to negotiate in case of an offer, be wise here, it's important that I'm defining salary yearly here
• Expected Salary (number type): Here is the actual salary you are expecting, define in the template because you don't need to re-type all the time
• Application Date (created time type): Here is the automatic field which will get the current date

All properties are defined and now we have to define the content, here is pretty much open, but I like to do the following:

• Add a table list in which I can add the interviews I’ve participated in, then I can better organize everything instead of putting everything in one place
• Add a Notes space, here I type all information I think it's important about the company, the industry, people and so on

Now, our template will be like this:

Real-World example

So, now that we have all set, now, we can start adding new applications. Every new application you make, you will add to your notion page, so you will keep track of those applications.

As said before, the title can be anything, then I would only remove the Company Name which I would have to define the title of the page as Company Name anyway, but it's up to you.

After some interviews, I could see some important information that I could add to my notion page, so I could have a better view of the company, like:

• Foundation
• Industry
• Type: Startup/Big Company

Not to mention that I have to properly define the offer description, which I can add also in our template:

So, I believe that this template can help you keep track on your interview processes, so here is the link: https://www.notion.so/Job-Interviews-c2731f98feae48bc81735025c64b3932. Also, this is an ongoing process. If you find something interesting to add in this template, please share it with all of us, because it can be helpful for anyone who will also use this template.