Free template
A job application tracker you will still be using in week three.
Nine columns, one example row, nothing else. Download it, delete the example, and start. There is no email gate, no account, and nothing inside the file trying to sell you something.
CSV
Opens in Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets and everything else. Saved as UTF-8 with a byte-order mark, so a name with an accent in it survives Excel on Windows.
Download the CSVExcel workbook
The same nine columns with the header row frozen, a filter on row one, and column widths that already fit what goes in them.
Download the .xlsxRow 2 in both files is an example. Delete it and put your first application there.
A Google Sheets copy and a Notion version are not here. Both have to be published from accounts that do not exist yet, and a broken link to a template is worse than a sentence saying it is not ready.
The columns
Nine columns, and what each one is for.
Most tracker templates have thirty columns, because thirty columns look thorough in a screenshot. A tracker you abandon in week two is worth nothing, so this one has only the fields you would still fill in at eleven at night after finishing the application itself.
- Company
The one column you will sort by when a recruiter calls and you have four seconds to remember which application this is.
Northwind Payments
- Role
The title as the posting wrote it, not as you would describe it. Two openings at one company are told apart by this and nothing else.
Senior Backend Engineer, Payments
- Posting URL
Postings come down. Paste the link on the day you find it, because the page you want to re-read before the interview is the one that will be gone.
https://boards.example.com/northwind/senior-backend
- Found on
How old the posting was when you applied is the single number this sheet can teach you, and you can only learn it if you write down when you saw it.
2026-08-18
- Applied on
Blank means you have not applied yet, which makes this column the to-do list. Filled in, it is the clock on every follow-up.
2026-08-19
- Status
One word from a fixed list. A free-text status column becomes twelve spellings of 'waiting' inside a month.
Phone screen
- Next step
What YOU do next, with a date. Not what they might do. A tracker full of 'waiting to hear back' is a tracker that has stopped working.
Send the follow-up on 26 Aug
- Contact
The name of the person who replied, and where they replied. It is what turns the second application at that company into a warm one.
Dana Ruiz, recruiter (LinkedIn)
- Notes
What the posting demanded, what you claimed, what they asked. Read this before the interview, and read it again before you write the next CV.
Wants Kubernetes on-call ownership. Led with the payments migration.
One column, eight words
Status is a fixed list, not a sentence.
Pick one of these every time. A free-text status column becomes twelve spellings of waiting inside a month; then you cannot filter it; then you stop opening the sheet.
Ghosted is on the list deliberately. It is what happens to a large share of applications, and a template that only offers Rejected quietly suggests that silence was something you did.
- Found
- Applied
- Phone screen
- Interviewing
- Offer
- Rejected
- Ghosted
- Withdrew
How to actually use it
Four habits, and the sheet keeps working.
- 01
Add the row when you find the job, not when you apply
Fill in Company, Role, URL and Found on the moment you see the posting. That turns the sheet into your queue instead of your archive, and it is the only way the Found on column ever gets a true value.
- 02
Next step is something you do
"Waiting to hear back" is not a next step, it is the absence of one. Write the thing with your name on it and the date you will do it: send the follow-up, ask the referral, prepare the system design round.
- 03
Review the whole sheet once a week, in one sitting
Twenty minutes on a Sunday beats opening it every day. Everything whose Next step date has passed either gets a new date or gets moved to Ghosted, and Ghosted is a fine place for an application to end.
- 04
Write in Notes what the posting demanded and what you claimed
This is the column that pays for the whole exercise. Before an interview it is your revision notes, and before the next application it tells you which version of your evidence has been working.
What it will not do
A spreadsheet is bookkeeping, not a strategy.
This sheet will not get you an interview. What it does is stop the small losses: applying twice to the same company, letting a warm reply go cold, forgetting which version of your CV you sent, going into a call with no memory of what the posting asked for.
It also teaches you one number nobody else will tell you, which is how old a posting was when you applied to it. Track Found on and Applied on for a month and you will find out whether you are reaching jobs on day one or on day nine, and that is the difference between being read and being applicant number two hundred.
About the template.
What should a job application tracker include?
Company, role, the posting URL, the date you found it, the date you applied, a one-word status, your next action with a date, who you have spoken to, and notes on what the posting asked for. That is the nine columns in this file. Everything beyond that is a column you will stop filling in.
Do I have to give you my email to download it?
No. Both files are static downloads on this page. Nothing is behind a form, we do not know that you took it, and there is no follow-up sequence attached to it.
Is Excel or Google Sheets better for this?
Whichever one is already open on your machine. The CSV imports into either; the .xlsx is the one to take if you want the frozen header and the widths already set. The tracker that works is the one you do not have to go anywhere to open.
How often should I update it?
Twice a week is enough: once when you add new postings, once when you clear the past-due next steps. A tracker maintained daily and a tracker maintained on Sundays are the same tracker after a month; one of them is still being maintained.
Do you track my applications automatically?
No. We watch the job market and write a CV for a posting you approve. We do not have a browser extension, we do not read your inbox, and we do not submit applications, so we could not know that you applied unless you told us. This sheet is the honest version of that gap.
Where are the Google Sheets and Notion versions?
Not published yet. Both would live in accounts that have to be created and shared publicly first, and linking to a copy that does not exist is a worse experience than reading this sentence.
The sheet tracks what you applied to. We can tell you what to apply to.
One scanner over the whole US tech market, filtered to what you asked for, and a CV written for the posting you pick. The account is free.