A postdoc asks—

I would appreciate tips and tricks for organizing our documents for all these applications. Do 100 applications turn into 100 separate folders? I sometimes feel that is what is necessary, but I frequently get lost in files. I want to be able to easily reference documents I’ve already written for similar jobs.

Organizing is quite individually personal (as far as what you find easiest to navigate), but I tend to organize folders by name of the organization, with documents named by position, and then have a separate spreadsheet that keeps track of related dates and other notes on the process. If you are using online file storage, you can even link to the organization folders from your main spreadsheet.

One word of caution; I recommend against literally reusing resumes in basically any case—even if the positions are very similar, the important key terms and most valuable skills to showcase will almost always vary at least a little bit. It can feel like reusing a resume saves you time, but if the lack of customization stops you from getting an interview (for example, if some key terms don’t quite match the synonyms you use in your reused resume, you may not pass from an applicant tracking system to a human reader!), it ends up being more of a time waster than a time saver.

-David Blancha, Assistant Director, Career Development Team for Researchers