Why Google Sheets Sucks for Hiring (Yes, We Said It)

Let’s just say it: Google Sheets is where good hiring goes to die.

Okay, maybe not die—but definitely get confused, delayed, and maybe ghosted by accident.

If you’ve ever tried managing your hiring pipeline in a spreadsheet, you know what we’re talking about:

• Endless rows of half-filled data
• Notes hidden in tiny comments
• Random color coding that no one understands
• That one teammate who never updates anything

It starts off innocent. One role. A few candidates. Simple tracking. Then boom—chaos.

1. Hiring ≠ Excel Olympics

Hiring isn’t about how fast you can color a cell green or write =FILTER(). It’s about people. And people don’t fit neatly in rows and columns.

You need stages, notes, resumes, screening answers, interview schedules—and most importantly—a way to **not lose your mind **keeping track of it all.

2. Teamwork in Sheets = “Who edited this?!”

Hiring is a team sport. But when everyone’s editing the same sheet, it’s more like dodgeball.

No access control. No version history anyone wants to look at. Just overlapping updates and confusion like:

“Did someone already email this candidate?” “Wait, didn’t they reject us first?” “Who marked this one as ‘Maybe’?”

Let’s be honest—this isn’t collaboration. It’s spreadsheet anarchy.

3. Repetitive Tasks Will Eat Your Soul

Updating stages? Manually. Sending emails? One by one. Scheduling interviews? In a different tool. Remembering who applied last week? LOL.

Unless your dream job is "Human Hiring Spreadsheet Robot", this is exhausting.

4. Your Candidates Deserve Better

Imagine applying to a job and never hearing back. Or getting a reply a month later. Or getting invited to an interview after being rejected.

That’s what happens when your “ATS” is a tab in Google Drive.

A smooth hiring process isn’t just for your team—it shows candidates that your company has its act together.

5. You Forget the Good Ones

“Oh, I remember this guy! He was great!”

Yeah. But the job closed, and his resume is buried somewhere in "Copy of Hiring Sheet (final).xlsx".

Without a proper way to **tag, group, **and revisit candidates, you're basically hiring with short-term memory loss.

And that’s just sad.

Look, We Love Google Sheets. Just Not for This.

Use it to track your office snack inventory. Use it to plan your company trip. Use it to calculate how many cups of coffee your team drinks in a week.

But please, for the love of hiring— Stop using it to build your team.

There are tools made to handle this stuff. They make hiring feel less like a chore and more like a flow. Some even let you manage candidates, post jobs, leave notes, and build a talent pool—without touching a single formula.

(We’re not naming names. But you know who we’re talking about. 😉)

TL;DR:

Spreadsheets are great. Hiring in spreadsheets? Not so much. Your team—and your candidates—deserve better.