I applied through LinkedIn, company career pages, Workday portals and recruiters. Two weeks in, I couldn't say how many applications were still alive. The updates were all in my inbox, scattered across dozens of emails.
Prashanna Guru · for the LinkedIn hiring team
An interview is 30 minutes. Here's more of how I think.
While job hunting on LinkedIn, I kept losing track of where each application stood. Rather than only describe how I'd fix that in a conversation, I designed the answer and made it real: the problem, the product, and how I'd ship it at LinkedIn.
4gaps from my own search
10reminders designed
5success metrics
Your applications
Example14Tracked
9Waiting
3Interviews
Reply to recruiter
Razorpay asked for your updated resume 2 days ago. You haven't replied yet.
LLinkedInSenior Product ManagerInterview
RRazorpayProduct Manager, PaymentsAction needed
FFreshworksApplied on company siteWaiting
Updated from Gmail 4 min ago
Where I got stuck
LinkedIn is where I find jobs. It isn't where my job search lives.
Only part of the picture
The jobs tracker shows roles I applied to through LinkedIn. Applications on company sites or other portals never appear, so it can't be my one place.
No quick read on where I stand
On my phone there's no single view of how many I've applied to, how many replied and what's next. I tap through tabs to piece it together.
Updates live in email
Recruiter replies, interview invites and rejections arrive by email, so any tracker that waits for me to update it falls behind.
Help arrives too late
LinkedIn has strong prep tools like Career Hub, but I found them by chance. The moment an interview is booked is when I need them, and nothing points me there.
The irony: my interview with LinkedIn, scheduled over email, doesn't show up in my LinkedIn job tracker. JobTracker picked it up on its first sync.
The product
One place that keeps itself up to date and helps you win the job.
Fixes 1 and 3
Every application, from your inbox
Reads Gmail (read-only) and recognises updates from LinkedIn, Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Naukri and recruiters. Rules handle the clear emails; AI reads only the unclear ones.
Fixes 2
Your search at a glance
Tracked, waiting, interviewing and closed on one screen. Each application has a timeline built from the actual emails, so you can trust every status.
Fixes 3
Reminders that read the email
Not timers. It knows when a recruiter asked you for something, when an interview has passed, and when an application has gone quiet.
Fixes 4
An AI coach at the moment of need
When an interview appears, the coach finds the exact job posting, reads your resume, researches the company's rounds and runs a spoken mock interview with feedback.
Intelligent reminders
Reminders that understand what the email asked for.
- A recruiter asks for something"Reply to the recruiter": your resume, availability or a form, until you've repliedBuilt
- Interview invite, no time booked"Pick a slot" before the window closesBuilt
- Interview coming up"Prepare", with the AI coach for that exact job one tap awayBuilt
- Interview time has passed"Did it happen?", then "Send a thank-you note"Built
- Assessment or take-home received"Complete the assessment" before the deadlineBuilt
- No reply for a while"Follow up", timed to the stage you're atBuilt
- Offer arrives"Respond to the offer", with the deadline in viewBuilt
- Follow-ups and thank-you notesDrafts the email for you, from the thread's contextNext
- A rejectionAsk for feedback and suggest similar open rolesNext
- Reply timingLearns each company's typical reply time instead of a fixed 7 daysNext
If I built this inside LinkedIn
How I'd ship it, measure it and de-risk it.
A side project can ignore scale. LinkedIn can't, so here's how I'd approach it as a PM on the Jobs team.
Ship first
- Let members bring in outside applications: forward a confirmation email, or connect email read-only.
- A "where you stand" card at the top of My Jobs on mobile: applied, heard back, interviewing.
- When an interview is detected, surface interview prep and Career Hub right on that job.
Measure
Share of a member's active applications visible in the trackerCoverage
Weekly return visits to My JobsEngagement
Reminders acted on within 48 hoursUsefulness
Members who use prep before an interviewDiscovery
Interview-to-offer rate, prepped vs. notOutcome
De-risk early
- Email access is sensitive: start with forwarding, keep it read-only, make deletion one tap.
- A wrong status is worse than none: always show the source email and allow one-tap correction.
- Reminder fatigue: cap them per week and learn from dismissals.
What else I learned
Advantages I didn't plan for.
- Zero data entry. The fastest way to keep a tracker current is to never ask the user to update it.
- Discovery happens at the moment of need. Prep tools get used when they appear right after an interview is booked, not in a separate menu.
- A personal funnel. Applications → replies → interviews → offers shows where you drop off: your resume or your interviews.
- Reminders beat dashboards. The overview is useful, but the moment of value is a timely nudge: reply to the recruiter, prepare for tomorrow, follow up today.
Product decisions
The trade-offs that shaped it.
Each choice started from one question: what makes a job seeker trust this enough to stop keeping their own list?
- Email as the source of truth. Every portal sends email, so reading the inbox covers applications LinkedIn never sees.
- Zero data entry over rich features. Anything the user has to update by hand eventually goes stale, so the default is automatic, with one-tap corrections.
- Show the evidence. Every status links back to the email it came from. Trust mattered more than a clever summary.
- Rules first, AI only when unsure. Cheaper, faster and more private, and it keeps AI for the ambiguous emails where it adds value.
- Read-only and deletable. Asking for inbox access is a big ask, so the app can't send or delete anything, and one tap removes all your data.
- Practise out loud, not in text. Interviews are spoken, so the coach talks, listens and follows up the way a real interviewer would.
Demo
See it on my real inbox.
Walkthrough video coming soon
A 90-second tour: first sync, the overview, reminders and a mock interview.
First syncAt a glanceRemindersMock interview
Try it
Run it on your own inbox.
It's in testing, so Google only allows Gmail access for people I add by hand. Leave your Gmail address and I'll send an invite, usually within a day.
Already invited?
Download for Android- Open the file and allow the install when Android asks.
- Sign in with the Gmail address you were invited with.
- Tap Sync. The first scan takes a few minutes.
I'd love to talk about how this could work at LinkedIn.
A conversation is a short window, so I wanted to show you how I work: start from a real user pain, make something people can use, and decide how to measure it. That's what I'd bring to LinkedIn.