Forgetting what jobs you applied for

Has anyone experienced this? Sometimes when I'm putting feelers into the market I'll toss 10 - 15 resumes out at one time. Weeks can go by before someone calls me, telling me they're calling on behalf of [insert company name here] regarding my recent application. Here is the problem: If a good amount of time has passed since my application, I might have no idea of who is calling me or what the position was.

Obviously I'm interested in talking because if I applied for a job, it sounded good to me at one point. But I do feel sheepish trying to find out exactly what job it was for without sounding off-putting.

Any tips / tricks, or do we just flat out ask them to remind us of the position, company, etc?

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Comments

networker050184

I usually ask them to send me an email with the job description.

ptilsen

Yeah, I'll just ask for a reminder. It's a bit embarrassing, but what can they expect? I don't think most recruiters/HR/hiring managers are so naive to think that we applied to that one position or that we remember all the details of every positions we applied to off-hand. I try to remember the details of the few positions I think are really great fits or are with companies that are highly desirable, but I let the rest go.

Topping that off, I've found myself applying to multiple positions at the same company every time I've searched. There are quite a few fortune 500s with large presences in the Twin Cities, and they will often have multiple positions relevant to my skills. So I'm definitely not going to remember the details of similar positions within the same company.

I think the biggest challenge of all this is when one company bids with multiple recruiting firms. I've applied for the same position multiple times via different recruiters simultaneously. Luckily, the job ad tends to come from the company, not the recruiter, so I can generally recognize where I've done this when I can't avoid it altogether. It's still extremely annoying, and is one of many issues that has led me to really hate the whole recruiting industry, to go completely off-topic.

Akaricloud

I ran into that quite a bit and feel like it may have hurt my chances at a couple jobs. Now I keep a google doc that I can quickly open on what I've applied for, job descriptions, expected pay, ect.

It can absolutely make a difference in their first impression of you. If their first impression is you're excited about this specific opportunity enough to know the position, roles, company, ect then you're much better off.

SteveLord

I always used a spreadsheet with everything I needed. To include links to job descriptions or a link to a document with the text. Was easy enough to update daily.

CompuTron99

I print the ad to PDF and store it along with my cover letter and version of resume in my dropbox account. I found that some companies gather resumes, then let the ad expire before calling.

MentholMoose

SteveLord wrote: »

I always used a spreadsheet with everything I needed. To include links to job descriptions or a link to a document with the text. Was easy enough to update daily.

I do the same (using Google Apps spreadsheet). For very interesting jobs I'll make a PDF of the job description in case the link goes dead.

BradleyHU

i think that's all happened to us...when i'm looking for a job, i apply to way too many jobs to remember everyone i've applied to. And since I use craiglist & indeed to look up alot of jobs, alot of them tend to dont have company names, so i tend to not know who the company is...

undomiel

I'm with SteveLord and MentholMoose on this. When I'm hunting I keep a spreadsheet with a link to the job description, job title, company and the date contacted. There's also a column for additional notes when pertinent. It's a habit I got into when I was drawing unemployment. I definitely like MentholMoose's idea of capturing a PDF of some of the higher profile jobs as well so that you can pull up the description easily if the link goes dead.