Artie Moffa has been a Redditor for 12 years and has written over 1,000 posts and comments on the platform. According to him, nothing is more popular than posts about spreadsheets in particular.
Two years ago, Moffa posted some spreadsheet templates that she used when looking for a job. To this day, the Alexandria, Virginia, resident believes that at “all hours of the day and night,” he sees several avatars on his files representing job seekers looking for a way to manage unwieldy searches. “Thank you for sharing,” one commenter wrote. “This is very helpful in this hellish job market.”
When it comes to job hunting today, Moffa says, “You really need a system.”
Using spreadsheets as part of a job search system is nothing new. But they take on new meaning and usefulness for applicants facing particularly difficult and protracted searches in today’s “low-employment” job market. Last year, U.S. employers added just 116,000 jobs, compared to 1.46 million in 2024. Roughly 1 in 4 unemployed Americans, or about 1.8 million Americans, have been looking for work for more than six months.
Some applicants tell CNBC Make It that spreadsheets are helping them manage logistics as they process more applications than they’ve ever submitted before. But spreadsheets also keep them motivated, provide a much-needed sense of control in a tough job market, and allow them to uncover patterns and adjust their searches accordingly.
Moffa, who was applying for positions both in San Francisco, where she lived for more than a decade, and in Dublin, where she earned her MBA, says she realized she needed a spreadsheet after her search turned out to be longer and more complicated than she expected.
“This has been a 20-month search,” Mofa added. “You can’t do it with post-its.”
“I have never felt the need to keep track as much as I do now.”
Mofa used multiple spreadsheets, including a job application tracker, to avoid distractions. “The last thing you want to say to a recruiter is, ‘Sorry, I’ve applied for a lot of jobs and I don’t remember you that well,'” he says.
Michael Trusio of Newport Beach, California, started using spreadsheets when searching for sales leadership roles because of the volume of applications he received. He initially tracked applications by sorting them into folders in his inbox, but that was no longer enough. Spreadsheets, he says, have helped him avoid becoming overwhelmed by the growing volume of applications.
Approximately 8,200 applications are submitted per minute on LinkedIn, and 38% of U.S. job seekers are applying to more jobs than ever before, while responding less frequently, the company told CNBC Make It on April 3.
Lara Thompson says spreadsheets help her see patterns in what works and what doesn’t during a difficult job search.
Lara Thompson
Lara Thompson of Atlanta, who has been looking for a marketing operations management job since January 2025, tracks information such as who she contacted when applying, whether anyone recommended her, and which version of her resume she submitted. During her last job search in 2020, she had two versions of her resume. Today, she has about 20.
“I’ve never felt the need to track as much as I do today,” Thompson says. “You have to approach your job search in a completely different way.”
“It’s natural to try to control what you can.”
Spreadsheets aren’t just for organization. It can also give candidates a sense of control in a job market that offers little, said Mindy Schoss, an organizational psychology professor at the University of Central Florida.
Spreadsheets can help applicants “better manage uncertainty and maintain a sense of control and structure as they navigate the difficult job search process,” Schoss says.
“People have a basic psychological need to feel certainty and predictability in their lives,” she added. “When the future becomes uncertain and difficult to predict, it is natural to want to control what we can.”
The average length of unemployment in March was 25.3 weeks, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many employers are inundated with AI-generated applications, which can lead to delays in the hiring process. As of November 2025, it took companies an average of 47 days to extend an offer after posting a job, compared to less than a month in late 2022, according to Indeed data.
Michael Trusio’s job search spreadsheet (some of which is shown with anonymized information) also includes columns for company, industry, headquarters location, and other fields.
Looking at spreadsheets can sometimes be discouraging, Torcio attests. By my count, he has applied for more than 500 positions since mid-2024. “It paints a picture that I don’t want to see sometimes,” he says. But he added that it also shows the effort he put in and the “small wins” along the way.
“This gives me a clearer picture and direction of where I’ve been, where I am today, and hopefully where I’m going,” Torcio says.
Documenting the investigation helped Moffa “stay positive” when the process felt “demoralizing,” he said. “If you can map reality into a spreadsheet, you can iterate, you can test, you start to understand your world a little bit more.”
Learn “What’s working and what’s not”
Spreadsheets can also help you “start to see patterns” in your job search, Schoss says. “All humans are scientists at heart,” she added. “People will try to understand themselves better so they can read patterns and understand what to do next.”
That’s exactly what Sarah Rainey has done. When the Richmond, Virginia, resident (who has become known to her former colleagues as the “Excel Queen”) started her latest job search in mid-February, creating a spreadsheet was a no-brainer.
Rainey said her previous roles had come with the title project manager, so she was initially drawn to positions with similar titles. However, her spreadsheet data analysis and the job responsibilities of her role within it revealed that her real-world work experience was more suited to an operational or strategic position. Without tracking, she says, you’ll be looking for the wrong job openings.
Sarah Rainey says her job search spreadsheet, part of which is shown here, helped her stay more focused.
sarah rainey
Rainey’s data analysis also revealed other patterns. She found that the roles she received a response from took an average of about nine business days. She says that doing so has reduced follow-up time. Seeing that 90% of roles with target salaries were at senior associate level or higher helped her “validate how I should be positioning myself,” she says.
Thompson similarly says that her spreadsheets reveal “what’s working and what’s not.” For example, you can see which versions of your resume get the most attention, so you’re using those versions more now.
Moffa’s portfolio of spreadsheets also included one document noting who ultimately won the job he was turned down, when he was able to discern much from his LinkedIn posts. At a time when companies rarely provide feedback, he says analyzing these people’s suitability for a position compared to his own gave him insight into his own application and candidacy.
Thompson, Rainey, and Torcio are still searching, adding to the spreadsheet one row and column at a time. Moffa’s spreadsheet and other job search efforts paid off. He currently works in managed services for a Japanese electronics company. He’s glad he found the job, but says he doesn’t need a spreadsheet to manage his job search.
“It brings some order to the chaos,” he added. “But I deeply deplore the confusion that exists.”
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