The follow-up is the part that pays
Applying is the easy half. Send 40 applications over eight weeks and your memory holds maybe the last five. The role you applied for on 12 March, where the recruiter said shortlisting was still going on, quietly dies — not because you were rejected, but because nobody sent the two-line email that would have put you back on the screen.
A follow-up works because hiring is a queue, not a single decision. A recruiter handling nine open roles processes whatever is in front of them that morning. A short, specific message — role title, job ID, date applied — moves your name from an unopened pile into an open thread, and open threads get answered.
Seven working days after applying is a sensible first nudge in Indian hiring, where one round can sit with a panel for a fortnight. Send a second at three weeks, then stop and mark the role closed. After an interview, the date that matters is the one they gave you: if the panel says it will revert by Friday, Friday is the follow-up date.
What to record so the follow-up writes itself
The fields that earn their keep are the ones you cannot reconstruct later: the name of the person who replied, where the listing came from (Naukri, LinkedIn, a referral, the company careers page), and the exact role title, since large firms run four variants of Software Engineer II at the same time.
Money and notice period belong in the notes too. If you told a recruiter your expectation was ₹18,00,000 and a 60-day notice, that number will be quoted back at you in round three, and contradicting yourself is a real way to lose an offer. One line per conversation is enough to stay consistent.
After 30 applications the log starts answering questions. If eight referrals produced five replies and 22 portal applications produced two, you have learned where the next month of effort should go. That pattern is only visible when the applications sit in one place with honest dates attached to them.
Where your list actually lives
Everything you enter is written to your browser's local storage on this device. There is no account, no server and no sync, which is rather the point: a job search is the one list you do not want sitting on a work laptop, in a shared drive, or inside a service that emails you about it.
The trade-off is real and worth stating plainly. Clearing site data, using a private window, or switching from your phone to a laptop means the list will not be there. Use “Export CSV” once a week and keep the file in your own storage, where it stays readable long after you have stopped job hunting.
There is also no model doing anything clever here. The tracker sorts dates, counts rows and hands you a CSV; it does not write your emails, score your chances or predict an outcome. What makes it work is that you open it every morning and act on the rows that have come due.