The Sunday job search review: twenty minutes that keep the hunt on track

Why twenty minutes on a Sunday pays off

During the week, a job hunt is a stream of small tasks: an ad to read, a form to finish, an email to answer. It is easy to stay busy all week and still lose track of the bigger picture. Which applications have gone quiet? Which interview needs preparing for? Is anything you are doing actually working?

A weekly review steps back from the stream. Done at the same time each week, it takes about twenty minutes, and it turns a pile of activity into a plan. It also gives you a clear end to the week, which matters more the longer a hunt runs.

Keep it short and keep it fixed. A review you skip when the week was bad is the one you most needed. If the numbers are thin, that is exactly what the review is for.

The five questions to ask

Work through the same five questions each week, with your tracker or spreadsheet open:

1. What went out? Applications, follow-ups and messages to people, with the dates.
2. What moved? Replies, phone screens, interviews, rejections and offers.
3. What is coming up? Interviews, assessments and closing dates in the next seven days.
4. What has gone quiet? Applications with no reply after a week to ten days.
5. What is working, and what is not? Where the replies come from, and where they do not.

Write the answers down, even as a few words each. Four weeks of notes show patterns that one week cannot, such as a kind of role that always gets a reply or a source that never does.

Follow-ups due and what to close

Go through every open application in date order. Anything you applied for a week to ten days ago or more, with no reply, is due a short, polite follow-up this week. Our guide to following up a job application has the timing and the wording.

Then close what has gone quiet for good. An application with three weeks of silence after a follow-up is unlikely to come back to life, and leaving it open keeps it on your mind. Mark it closed, note the date, and let it go. If they do get in touch later, you can reopen it.

Closing is not giving up. A short active list is easier to manage well, and it shows you honestly how many live chances you have.

One thing to change

Look back at question five and choose one change for the coming week. Only one, so you can tell whether it worked. Some common ones:

• Plenty of applications and no replies: apply to fewer roles and tailor each CV more closely to the ad.
• Phone screens but no interviews: prepare a clearer answer to why you want the role and what you would earn.
• Interviews but no offers: write up each interview straight afterwards and practise the answers that wobbled.
• Too few good ads: widen the search, or spend an afternoon talking to people in the field.

If nothing needs changing, say so and keep going. A steady week is a result too.

Three priorities for Monday

Finish by writing down the three things that matter most next week, in order. Usually they come from what you have just reviewed: preparing for an interview in the diary, applying for a strong role before it closes, and sending the follow-ups that are due. Three is enough to start Monday with a plan rather than a list of forty tabs. Our article on prioritising which jobs to apply for helps choose between saved roles.

jobtracker.co.nz does much of this for you. Its Do this next list puts each job's most urgent step first: an interview to prepare for, a debrief to write, a follow-up due, an application quiet for ten days, or a saved job about to close. If you switch it on in your account, it can also send a Monday morning email with last week's counts and up to three things for the week ahead. It holds counts only, never an employer's name or a job title, and its subject line does not mention a job hunt. You can see the list working in the demo, which needs no account.

Whether you use a tool or a notebook, keep the habit. Twenty minutes a week is a small price for a hunt that stays organised, and for Mondays that start with a clear first step.

Let the week add itself up