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Features & Usage Guide

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Terry Thomas edited this page Apr 14, 2026 · 7 revisions

Features & Usage Guide

A walkthrough of every major feature in Career Intelligence, from the analytics dashboard to interview prep guides.

Dashboard

The root page (/dashboard) provides a real-time overview of your job search with a responsive row-based layout:

Row 1: KPI Stats

Three summary cards in a horizontal strip:

  • Total Applications Submitted — Count of all tracked opportunities with an application date
  • Total Open Applications — Opportunities with active status (applied, interviewing)
  • Assessed Opportunities — Total opportunities tracked

Row 2: Applications by Week

  • 4-week rolling view of application activity in a full-width card
  • TWC (Texas Workforce Commission) week structure (Sunday–Saturday)
  • Color-coded: green for weeks meeting the 5-application target, red for below
  • Clickable cards link to filtered opportunity views for that week

Row 3: Insights

Side-by-side layout (3/5 + 2/5 width on large screens, stacked on mobile):

  • Top 4 Tech Skills to Focus On — Role-specific technology recommendations from RoleFocusAnalyzer, with percentage and count data
  • Source Distribution — Horizontal bar chart showing where opportunities originate

Row 4: Focus Areas by Role Type

  • Grid of role-specific focus area cards for non-primary roles
  • Color-coded by role type with insight recommendations

Opportunity Management

Creating Opportunities

Each opportunity is linked to a company and includes:

  • Core fields: Position title, application date, status, remote type, source, listing URL
  • Salary tracking: Free-text salary range with automatic standardization (converts "110k-125k" → "$110,000 - $125,000")
  • Scoring: Fit score (0-10), trajectory score (1-10), strategic value, bus factor
  • Income details: Income range low/high, retirement plan type, company size, risk level
  • Technology selection: Checkboxes grouped by category (75 technologies), plus free-text for unlisted technologies
  • Match tracking: ChatGPT match, Jobright match, LinkedIn match fields
  • Role-specific fields: Dynamic form section that changes based on selected role type

Role-Specific Form Fields

When you select a role type, additional fields appear:

Role Additional Fields
Software Engineer Tech stack importance, required/nice-to-have technologies, architecture type, team size, greenfield vs. legacy
Sales Engineer Sales motion, deal type, ACV range, quota type, customer persona, demo intensity, pressure sources, energy type
Solutions Engineer Implementation and customer success fields
Product Manager Product stage/type, PM type, engineering ratio, stakeholder complexity, roadmap horizon
Support Engineer Support workflow-specific fields
Success Engineer Customer lifecycle-specific fields

Filtering & Sorting

The opportunities index supports:

  • Text search by company name
  • Status filter dropdown
  • Date range filtering
  • Column sorting on: position title, application date, status, remote type, tech stack, created date, salary range, bus factor, role type, and company name

CSV Export

Export all opportunities (with metadata) to CSV from the index page for external analysis in spreadsheets or other tools.

Company Management

Company Fields

  • Basic: Name (case-insensitive unique), industry, location, website, LinkedIn
  • Classification: Company type (Product, Consultancy, Staffing), size, funding stage
  • Market analysis: Primary product, competitor tier, growth signal, tech disruption risk, and additional market intelligence fields
  • Tech stack: Aggregated from associated opportunities via tech_stack_summary and full_tech_stack_summary methods

URL Shortening

Website and LinkedIn URLs are automatically shortened via is.gd when saved or updated.

Technology Filtering

Filter companies by associated technology from opportunities.

Contact Management

  • Contacts belong to a company
  • Fields: name, title, email, phone, LinkedIn, about, notes
  • LinkedIn URLs are automatically shortened
  • Sortable by: name, title, email, phone, created date, and company

Interview Session Tracking

Creating Interview Sessions

Each session links to an opportunity and optionally to a contact:

Field Options
Stage Recruiter, Hiring Manager, Technical, Panel, Take-Home, Final, Other
Format Phone, Video, Onsite, Async
Status Planned, Completed, Cancelled
Overall Signal Strong Yes, Yes, Neutral, No, Strong No
Confidence Score 0-10 scale
Duration Minutes

Narrative Fields

  • Questions they asked — Record what was asked
  • Questions I asked — Track your questions for pattern analysis
  • Follow-ups — Action items after the interview
  • Next steps — What's expected next in the process
  • Notes — Rich text (ActionText) for detailed session notes

Sorting & Export

  • Sortable by all key columns including company, opportunity, and contact
  • CSV export for external analysis

STAR Story Library

STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) stories for behavioral interview preparation.

Story Fields

  • Core STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result
  • Metadata: Title, skills (array), category, notes
  • Scoring: Strength score (1-10), times used (auto-tracked), last used date
  • Outcome: Advanced, Rejected, Offer, Unknown

Categories

Incident, Technical Mistake, Leadership, DevOps, Refactor, Conflict, Architecture, Scaling, Problem Solving, Collaboration, Innovation

Usage Tracking

  • mark_as_used! increments times_used and updates last_used_at
  • Link stories to specific opportunities via StarStoryOpportunity
  • complete? and incomplete_fields methods help identify stories that need more detail

Scopes

  • Top rated — Highest strength scores
  • Frequently used — Most used stories
  • By category — Filter by category
  • Successful — Stories with positive outcomes

CSV Export

Export all STAR stories with skills and outcome data.

Resource Sheets

Interview preparation documents that can be auto-generated from opportunities.

Manual Creation

Create a resource sheet with:

  • Title, role type, version label
  • Company and/or opportunity association
  • Content sections: About Me, Why Company, Why Me, Salary, Notes
  • Each section has both a content field (prose) and a bullets field (key points)

Auto-Generation

Use Generate from Opportunity to create a draft resource sheet pre-populated with:

  • Company and opportunity context
  • Role type from the opportunity
  • Starter sections based on available opportunity data

Active/Inactive

Toggle resource sheets as active or inactive to manage which are current.

Interview Prep Guides

Four specialized question guides, each with seeded questions and the ability to add custom entries:

Behavioral Guide (/resources/guides/behavioral)

Questions about past experiences with:

  • Question text and its deeper meaning
  • Recommended response approach
  • Example response
  • Common pitfalls to avoid
  • Why the approach is strong

Technical Guide (/resources/guides/technical)

Technical interview questions with the same structured format.

Interviewer Questions Guide (/resources/guides/interviewer-questions)

Questions to ask interviewers — demonstrates engagement and gathers intelligence about the role/company.

Acquired Questions Guide (/resources/guides/acquired-questions)

Questions collected from actual interviews — a growing library of real-world interview questions encountered during the search.

Adding Custom Questions

Each guide supports adding your own questions via the ResourceGuideQuestion form, categorized by guide_type.

Demo Mode

Unauthenticated visitors can browse the app in read-only mode:

  • All pages are viewable using the demo user's seed data
  • Write operations (create, update, delete) are blocked and redirect to root with an alert
  • Useful for portfolio review — visitors can explore the full feature set without registering

← Architecture & Technical Design | Data-Driven Job Search Strategy →

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