4 Months of Job Search Broke Me. Then I Built Trackr.

This isn't a success story. There's no moment where I say "and then everything clicked". I searched for a job for four months. Burned out around month two. Kept going for another two on autopilot, without much hope. Trackr came from that experience. Not from inspiration. From exhaustion.

How It Started: Confident, With a Spreadsheet

February 2022 knocked me off my previous job - not because anything went wrong career-wise, just because everything around me stopped. Then came months where updating a CV was the last thing on my mind. When I finally started looking, it was already autumn. I made a Google Sheet. Columns: company, link, date sent, status. Looked serious. I even color-coded the statuses.

First three weeks - fine. I was sending 5-7 applications a day, replying to recruiters on LinkedIn, prepping for calls. It felt like I had a system. In reality there was no system, just the illusion of control through a spreadsheet.

Month Two: When the Spreadsheet Stops Helping

Somewhere around application forty I started losing count. I forgot where I'd applied. I'd message someone on LinkedIn only to find I'd already messaged the same recruiter three weeks earlier. Once I showed up to a technical interview and couldn't remember - is this the company where I already did the HR call, or a different one? I Googled it right before the call. They probably noticed.

The spreadsheet had turned into a list of shame. Rows with "no response" status stretched down for several screens. I'd start the morning by opening it and immediately wanting to close it.

• Sent over 80 applications in two months
• Got through 11 first HR calls, 6 technical interviews
• Got 2 offers - both below my expectations
• Declined both and kept looking. Was that a mistake? Still not sure

What killed me most wasn't the rejections. Rejections are fine, you can live with those. The worst was silence. You send something, and nothing. One week. Two. Then you think: maybe follow up? Maybe they already closed the role? Maybe my CV didn't even pass ATS and no one ever read it?

Burnout Doesn't Look Like the Articles Say

I expected burnout to look like lying in bed unable to move. Mine looked different. I kept functioning. Got up. Opened job boards. Sent applications. But it wasn't really me anymore - it was some automated process just going through the motions with nothing left inside.

Preparing for interviews became physically hard. Not because I didn't know the material. Because I no longer believed it would change anything. Every new recruiter call felt heavier. By month three I couldn't properly answer "tell me about yourself" - partly because I didn't know what to tell someone who probably wouldn't call back anyway.

I took a week off. Helped a little. Then came back to the same spreadsheet and realized: the problem wasn't me. The problem was that I had no proper tool. I was managing a complex, nonlinear process - job searching - with something invented for grocery lists.

What's Wrong With Every Existing Solution

I tried everything. Notion templates - nice, but you have to set them up yourself, and a week later you forget to update them. Spreadsheets - already covered. Dedicated job-search apps - either dead or built for the US market, where everything works differently. None of them understood what it means to search with a Ukrainian CV, with relocation in your background, with a 2022 gap you need to explain somehow.

Another thing that drove me mad: no tool helped with the actual content. A tracker is a tracker, fine. But where can I quickly check my CV before sending? Where do I prep for a specific interview? Where do I understand what questions company X is likely to ask? I was switching between five different tools and ChatGPT in the browser. That's not a process - that's chaos.

• Notion templates: look great, stall on setup
• Google Sheets: fast, but blind - no reminders, no analysis
• American job-tracker apps: no idea what Djinni or Work.ua even are
• ChatGPT standalone: useful, but isolated from everything else

Trackr Didn't Come From an Idea. From a Specific Pain.

In month four I finally got an offer I accepted. But the first thing I did after signing the contract was sit down and write out everything I needed during the search that didn't exist. Not as a startup idea. Just to get it out of my head.

The list was specific: a visual Kanban by stages (not just "in progress" or "rejected", but real stages - HR call, test task, technical, offer), CV check against a specific job description, interview prep that accounts for what I already know about the company, follow-up reminders. All in one place.

That's how the Trackr job tracker came to be - a Kanban with 14 stages that actually reflects what a modern recruiting process looks like. Not two statuses in a spreadsheet, but the full path from "found a vacancy" to "signed an offer".

Then came the AI CV Analyzer. Because one thing that haunted me was never knowing if anyone was even reading my CV. ATS filters are a black box. Now it's not a black box: upload your CV, paste the job description, and see line by line where the problem is.

What I Wish I'd Known at the Start

I'm not going to give you a list of "10 tips for a successful job search". But a few things I learned the hard way - those I'll say.

1. 1Chaos in the process costs more than it seems. Not just nerves. You lose real chances because you forget to follow up, mix up companies, and don't track what worked.
2. 2A CV you don't tailor to the role almost never gets read. One generic CV sent everywhere is a lottery with very bad odds.
3. 3A pause is not weakness. A week off in month two would probably have saved me month four.
4. 4A recruiter's silence is not a judgment of you as a person. They're just busy or the role closed. Sounds obvious, but by month three the brain starts thinking differently.
5. 5Interview prep is not memorizing questions. It's understanding the company, the role, and how your experience lands in their context.

Trackr wasn't built to make money (though the hosting bills are real). It was built so the next person sending their fortieth application and not remembering where they already applied has something better than a spreadsheet with colored cells.

If you're in the middle of it right now - hang in there. Genuinely. Not because "everything will be fine", but because month four ends too.