Track Your Opportunities / Keep Score

“There is no one right way to measure your progress.  Any way you decide to do it will work.  The important point is that you do some type of measurement.”

-        Jerry Bruckner

I found out quickly that I started to lose track of which jobs I had applied for, which job I was talking to someone about, who were the key people involved, what were the qualities they were looking for, how long had it been since last contact, what was the next step, etc.  This might vary some with the length of your job transition activity, but I found it incredibly helpful to create a table of all the opportunities that I was pursuing and their status.

I put this in a spread sheet, because I’m a science nerd, and worked to update it once or twice a week.  I would move opportunities up or down the list depending on how active they were at that point in time. I would try to fill in any missing details with each phone call or e-mail or networking meeting, and then update what the status was on that opportunity.  The status is important, and you must be honest with yourself on it.

I wanted to keep it as simple as possible but have enough information to keep it straight.  So, the headers for my columns in the table were:

• Company Name

• Contact Name

• Title (of the position)

• Location (of the opportunity)

• Recruiter (if there was one)

• Description of Activity (what are you doing next to progress this opportunity)

• Then four categories to track activity: Phone interview, Video conference interview, Face to face interview, and Offer.

This helped me to have a quick snapshot of all the opportunities that I had some level of positive engagement going on, and then track the progress of them through the process.  This is probably a little bit akin to a sales CRM system where you track sales opportunities.  I found myself updating this document and feeling a bit more in control of the landscape of opportunity.  I would move opportunities up or down on the list, and I would take them off the list if things went South.

“Once you start tracking your goals, you’re able to see the small, day by day progress that you might not otherwise notice.”

-        Betsy Ramser Jaime

The important thing is to have a view of the overall scorecard of your work.  This is also an opportunity for you to learn from your on-going efforts.

• If you don’t have enough irons in the fire, then your page will be sparse, and this may be a wakeup call for you to get after things more aggressively,

• It may help you to understand what types of opportunities don’t seem to be a fit for you. 

• Moving the most promising opportunities up and the brick wall opportunities down the list, will help you keep focused on the deals that have some momentum behind them. 

• The data isn’t emotional…it is data. Staring into this data straight on will benefit you.

This is also the document that you should use to update your partner and/or close friend with.  Giving enough details for them to understand the opportunity and where you are in the process, but not so much that it was overwhelming.  Being factual with the situation, having a process to communicate the current status, and talking through things was very helpful and healthy for my wife and me. Having it written down and summarized was extremely helpful to the discussion and talking it through out load forced a reality check to how and where things were on ‘the list.’

It is important to measure your results and track your progress.  This is true in many endeavors, but perhaps none more important than this one.