Fast Banking Recruiting Tracker
This conversation was generated using Cook'd AI's career assistant and reviewed by Fallon Han from our editorial team for accuracy.
I'm a master's student in finance in Singapore targeting global market teams at bulge bracket banks, and I do not need visa sponsorship. I want a compact way to see which banks are moving fastest and which offices are still silent. How should I build my tracker?
Build one row per application and make the tracker office-specific, not just bank-specific. Use columns for bank, office, desk or team, role, resume submitted date, HireVue date, first round date, superday date, current stage, and last update. Then add a color code for each stage so you can spot movement at a glance. For example, gray for no response, blue for resume submitted, yellow for HireVue, orange for first round, and green for superday. That lets you quickly see which offices are active and which have gone silent.
Should I separate London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and New York in the same sheet, or make separate tabs for each office?
Keep one master sheet and use a filter by office. That gives you a single view of all banks while still letting you sort by city when you want. If you want even faster scanning, add a dashboard tab with counts by stage for each office. For example, you can see that New York has three HireVues pending, while Hong Kong has two silent applications and London already moved two candidates to first round.
I also want to know which firms are faster overall. What metric should I use besides the color codes?
Add a speed column with the number of days from resume submission to the current stage. Then add a simple status tag like fast, moderate, or slow based on your own cutoff. For bulge bracket recruiting, you could mark fast if you get a response in under 7 days, moderate if it takes 7 to 14, and slow if there is no movement after 14. Since you do not need sponsorship, you can also add a note that says eligible, so you do not confuse silence with visa screening delays.
What is the best way to track silence without making the sheet too messy?
Use a last-touch date and a silence flag. If the last update is older than 10 business days and the stage is still resume submitted, mark it red or text it as stale. If an office is usually quiet, tag it as dormant rather than dead so you remember to follow up later. This keeps the sheet compact while still showing which offices are genuinely moving and which are just slow.
Can you give me a clean setup for the columns and colors so I can start tonight?
Yes. Use these columns: Bank, Office, Team, Role, Resume Date, HireVue Date, First Round Date, Superday Date, Current Stage, Days Since Submitted, Last Update, Speed Tag, and Notes. For colors, keep one color per stage and use a separate red highlight only for stale files. If you want, group by bank and sort by Current Stage so the fastest-moving offices rise to the top. That will give you a compact recruiting tracker that shows momentum across multiple offices at a glance.