I’ll start this post by saying that if you’re one of the thousands of employees impacted by tech industry layoffs over the last year - I’m so sorry. I know how much it sucks. I was laid off last May, and I know how hard it is. If you’re still processing, I wrote about that too; I hope it can be something that helps you.

If you’re ready to start your job search but feel overwhelmed trying to get organized, I made something that I also hope will help: a template Trello board.

I had so many people reach out and offer leads when I was laid off last year. It was fantastic, but also overwhelming! I needed an easy way to add structure so I could stay organized with my options, keep up with communications, plan my schedule around competing interview loops, and be able to easily compare roles.

I made a Trello board and template card to use for all incoming roles. It was a really low-overhead way to stay organized, so I’ve turned it into a template board to share: https://bit.ly/job-search-trello-template.

A quick tl;dr about the board setup:

• Leads column: This was basically my backlog. Everything went here, uncategorized and unsorted. I copied the template card for each lead and filled out what I could, but didn’t worry too much about the details. This column was just to get the leads out of email, LinkedIn, Twitter, Slack and into one place.

• Open Roles column: I shifted cards into this column if I wanted to apply to the role. Here’s where I would start focusing on adding more details, and taking a look at whether I needed to tailor my resume.

• Labels: I used labels to add another layer of structure - having a quick visible indicator was super helpful. The two most important labels were “Waiting for reply” (so I knew that nothing was waiting on me) and “Needs reply” (so I knew if something was waiting on me). It was much easier to track as a label on my Trello board than trying to sort through various email chains to see which one of us was the last to email.

I hope this helps! Please feel free to share this post and the Trello template link - this blog post mostly exists as a stable place to link folks to in case you lose track of the Trello board link.

Good luck searching! I know it can be tough - please remember to give yourself space to process, and treat yourself with kindness ❤️