Status Board

One of the tools for organizing a job search is a status board.

Using a status board is a great way to track on-going projects.  Status boards come in all types of formats to fit the purpose.  When I was a Navy officer, there were at least four status boards on the bridge of the ship.  Each one was different and served different purposes.  Some were on Plexiglas®.  Some were printed.

I have used a basic status board throughout my career as a corporate recruiter.  For me, using a spreadsheet makes the process easy.  The mock-up below is a brief illustration of what a basic spreadsheet status board might look like.  In this case, the example is an illustration of using a status board to manage a job search.

As you can see, a status board is different from a calendar.  The purpose is to give you an overall view of what you are doing across all activities.

This tool becomes even more useful when people are working on teams.  Each team member has a copy.  When the team meets to discuss the activities for the day, the members add notes to update their status board.  Literally, all the team members are on the same page.  In my search firm, team members used a simple form similar to the one above to manage dozens of activities.

As team members go through the workday, they update their copy of the status board to prepare for the next day’s meeting.  With the sharing features of online documents, it is now possible for teams to work on the status board from different locations.  What you will see is another person changing the status board as that person works.

There are apps for status boards. Many of these digital status boards are more really organizers than status boards. For example, Google Now for Android and Morning for iPad give you updates on news, weather, sports, commute, traffic, shopping, events nearby, and reminders, and not effective for project management.