TLDR: I got laid off, panicked, applied to hundreds of jobs, and immediately had no idea what was going on with any of them. I tried Excel. Then Notion. Both failed me for different reasons. Trello was the one that actually worked, and here’s the full story of how I got there.
The Moment I Realized I Had a Problem
Getting laid off does something to your brain. There’s about four seconds of complete silence, and then every rational thought you’ve ever had goes out the window and you start applying to jobs like you’re panic-buying groceries before a snowstorm.
That was me. I applied to hundreds of jobs in a very short window. No real filter, no strategy. Just volume. The thinking, if you can call it that, was that something would stick.
About 60% of those applications got auto-rejected before I ever talked to a human. No recruiter screen, no email, just an automated rejection from a company I’d already forgotten existed. That part was fine. Demoralizing, but fine.
The other 40% was the problem. Because 40% of hundreds of applications is a lot of companies, and they all reached out on their own timelines, for roles I only vaguely remembered applying to. I was getting recruiter calls and realizing mid-conversation that I had no idea what the job was. I had interviews on the calendar with no notes. I had companies I’d interviewed with three weeks ago that I hadn’t followed up with because I forgot they existed.
I needed a system. Badly.
What I Tried (And Why It Didn’t Work)
My first instinct was a spreadsheet. I’m a developer. I know how spreadsheets work. I set one up with columns for the company name, role, application date, status, and a notes field.
It lasted about a week. The problem wasn’t the spreadsheet itself, it was that I am genuinely not an Excel guy. I never have been. I can use it, but I resent every minute of it. And the bigger issue was that a spreadsheet is a terrible place to capture freeform information quickly. When a recruiter calls you out of nowhere, you don’t have time to find the right row, navigate to the notes column, and type anything useful before they’ve already moved on. I was losing information in real time.
So I switched to Notion. Notion is my main productivity tool. My blog workflow lives there. My reference docs live there. I have a lot of affection for Notion. But it failed me here, and I hate admitting that.
The issue is load time and friction. Notion requires you to navigate to the right database, open the right page, set the right properties. When you need to add a note right now, in the middle of a call, Notion makes you work for it. I missed things I should have captured because I was still clicking around by the time the recruiter had already said them.
Two tools down. Still drowning.
How Trello Fixed It
I hadn’t used Trello in a while. Notion replaced it for me a long time ago and I hadn’t thought about it much since. But I remembered it being fast and visual, which was exactly what I needed after two weeks of fighting the wrong tools.
I set up a board called “Job Search” with a list for each stage of the process: Applied, Recruiter Screen, Interviewing, Offer/Negotiating, Rejected, and Withdrawn. Each job got its own card. And the card became a mini-dossier on that company. Job description pasted in. Recruiter name and email. Notes from every call. Interview dates. What I needed to prep. Any follow-up actions I was waiting on.
Moving a card from one column to the next took two seconds. Opening a card to drop in notes mid-call was fast enough that I actually did it, instead of telling myself I’d do it later and then forgetting entirely. That speed difference turned out to matter more than anything else.
A few specific things made it more than just organized-looking:
Checklists for interview prep. Every card in the Interviewing column had one attached: review the job description, research the company, prep behavioral answers, prepare questions to ask them. Simple, but it kept me from showing up underprepared.
Due dates for follow-ups. Trello lets you put a due date on a card. I used this constantly. If I interviewed on a Monday and hadn’t heard anything by Friday, I had a date on the card reminding me to follow up. It kept me from both forgetting and from being annoyingly aggressive about checking in.
Contact info right there on the card. Before Trello, I was digging through my email every time I needed to reach out to someone. Recruiter name, email, and LinkedIn in the card description solved that immediately.
The board view itself was useful in a way I didn’t expect. At a glance I could see exactly how many companies were at each stage. It made the process feel manageable instead of like a pile of loose threads I was constantly about to drop.
What I’d Do Differently
Set this up on day one. Not after two weeks of failing with other tools. The system I needed was the fastest one, not the most powerful one, and I wasted time figuring that out the hard way.
I’d also be more consistent about pasting the job description into the card the moment I applied, not after I heard back. By the time some of these companies reached out, the posting was gone. I was going into recruiter calls working off a three-word memory of why I applied. Not ideal.
Where I Landed
Trello ran my entire job search from the point I switched to it. Every active company had a card. Every stage had a column. Every call had notes. It wasn’t the most sophisticated system I’ve ever built, but it was the one I actually used, which made it the best one by default.
Notion is still my home for everything else. But for something that required fast, frictionless capture across a lot of moving pieces, Trello was the right call.
Try This First
If you’re in the middle of a job search right now: open Trello, create a board, add six lists (Applied, Recruiter Screen, Interviewing, Offer, Rejected, Withdrawn), and make a card for every active application with the job description and any contact info you have. That’s it. Do it today, before you get another recruiter call you’re not ready for.
Take what’s useful. Leave the rest.
