Creating a Job Search Log Report
Overview
In Washington State, when you’re unemployed, you are required to maintain a job search log. Periodically, you’ll meet with a representative and provide them with the searches you’ve done within the last two weeks. Since I store my logs in Excel, I can export this data quickly. However, because I love COBOL and need more practice writing reports, I decided to create a Job Search Log Report using GnuCOBOL. I also thought this would be a good opportunity to show how I approach writing a program in COBOL.
The Data
Having created several reports on the mainframe—thanks to my pre-apprenticeship with EMMA—I had a basic idea of how I wanted to structure my data. After doing a little normalization, here’s what I ended up with:
| Field | Size | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Week Ending | 8 bytes | Numeric |
| Contact Date | 8 bytes | Numeric |
| Employer | 47 bytes | Alphanumeric |
| Job Title | 77 bytes | Alphanumeric |
| Contact Method | 1 byte | Numeric |
| Contact Type | 1 byte | Numeric |
| WorkSource Activity | 1 byte | Numeric |
Understanding the Data
Now that
Note: For this sample, I have condensed the data for easier viewing.
0726202507252025 WorkSource Lewis County Job Fair 122