When Google Sheets Stops Working for Hiring (and What to Use Instead)

Google Sheets works for hiring — until it doesn’t.

At first it feels simple:
• One sheet
• A few candidates
• Some notes
• A couple of interviews

Then hiring gets real.

Suddenly:
• Candidates are spread across email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and job boards
• Interview slots get double-booked
• Follow-ups slip
• Rejection emails pile up
• You’re not sure who’s in what stage anymore

If this sounds familiar, you’re not bad at hiring — you’ve just hit the point where coordination breaks spreadsheets.

The real breaking point isn’t headcount — it’s concurrency.

Most teams don’t outgrow spreadsheets because they reach 100 employees.
They outgrow spreadsheets when:
• You’re hiring more than one position at the same time
• Interviews span multiple weeks
• More than one person touches hiring
• Applicants come from multiple channels
• You need a real pipeline: Applied → Reviewed → Shortlisted → Hired

Spreadsheets don’t fail because they can’t store data.
They fail because they can’t run a hiring workflow.

Why spreadsheets break in real hiring

1) One sheet becomes “everyone’s inbox”
A sheet doesn’t collect applications — people do.

So candidates end up in:
• Gmail threads
• WhatsApp chats
• PDFs on phones
• Notes on someone’s laptop
• “I’ll add them later”

Now your spreadsheet is always behind reality.

2) There’s no reliable status system
You can add a “Status” column, but:
• Nobody updates it consistently
• Two people change it differently
• You lose track of “who followed up”
• You can’t enforce one application per candidate

3) No accountability, no timeline
Hiring needs a timeline:
• When did they apply?
• When was the last message?
• Did we schedule?
• Did they confirm?
• Did we reject?

A sheet has rows.
Hiring has events.