Build a Free ATS from Google Sheets — AI Hiring System

When Loop Media opened its first real job posting, the plan was "we'll just manage it in email." Two hundred applications later, the plan was on fire. Resumes buried in threads, no record of who'd been replied to, and a growing pile of candidates being accidentally ghosted — by a company that prided itself on doing right by people.

The standard fix is an applicant tracking system, and the pricing is startling for a small team: Greenhouse runs around $6,500 a year, Workable about $199 a month. For a company hiring three people a year, that's paying enterprise prices for a filing cabinet.

What Loop did instead: turned a Google Sheet into the whole hiring system — careers page, applications, AI resume screening, and automatic candidate emails — free, in an afternoon. Here's the build.

Step 1: Start With a Hiring Sheet

Two tabs is all it takes:

• Roles — one row per open position: title, description, requirements, status (open/closed)
• Applicants — one row per application, which the system will fill automatically: name, email, role, resume link, score, stage, notes

If you've been hiring out of your inbox, you don't even need to migrate the mess — start clean and let the sheet fill itself from here on.

Step 2: Sign Up for Love Spreadsheets

Create a free account at lovespreadsheets.com. The careers page and tracking system are free to build and run; team logins and a custom careers domain are the paid extras.

Step 3: Tell the AI What to Build

Choose the Website template — your ATS is really a small careers site wired to the sheet — and describe the flow:

"A careers page listing every open role from my Roles tab. Candidates click a role and apply through a short conversational flow — name, email, resume upload, and two role-specific questions. Each application lands as a row in Applicants. Score each resume 1–100 against the role's requirements and write the score and a two-line reasoning into the row. Send every applicant a confirmation email immediately — no one gets ghosted."

Worth adding while you're there:

• Stage tracking — Applied → Screened → Interview → Offer → Hired/Passed, editable by your team
• Alerts when a candidate scores above your bar, so strong applicants surface the same day
• Auto-replies on close — when you fill a role, everyone still in the pipeline gets a courteous update

Run it, answer any clarifying questions, and the build takes about 15–20 minutes.

Step 4: You Have an ATS

Your careers page is live at its own URL — link it from your site and job posts. Applications flow into the sheet in real time, each one scored with reasoning before you've read a word. Your team reviews candidates in the app view, moves stages, and adds notes; the sheet stays the permanent record underneath.

The scoring isn't there to auto-reject anyone — it's an ordering. When 200 people apply, the difference between a good process and a rude one is whether the strongest 20 get read while the role is still open.

Why This Beats Renting an ATS

The price fits how often you actually hire. ATS pricing assumes you hire constantly. Most small companies hire in bursts — and a sheet doesn't bill you during the quiet months.

Candidates get treated like humans. Instant confirmations, updates on close, no black hole. That reputation compounds — the runner-up you treated well applies again next year.

Your hiring record is a spreadsheet you own. Every applicant, score, and decision is in a format you can filter, audit, or export forever — not locked in a vendor's database.

Common Questions

Is AI scoring fair to candidates? It scores against the requirements you wrote, shows its reasoning, and a human makes every decision. It replaces the resume pile's randomness, not your judgment.

Can multiple people review together? Yes — team logins give everyone the same live pipeline, with notes and stages synced through the sheet.

What happens to applicants when a role closes? Ask for close-out emails: everyone still in the pipeline hears the news politely and automatically.

Try It Yourself

Open a sheet, write your roles into a tab, and head to lovespreadsheets.com. Describe the hiring flow you wish you had — by tomorrow's applications, every candidate gets an answer and your shortlist builds itself.