I’m hiring two new virtual team members at the moment and the response has been overwhelming. The only way to manage the process efficiently (and maintain my time and sanity!) is to automate as much of it as possible.

A key part of the process is filtering applications and I’ve discovered that Google (good old Google!) has yet another amazing free tool that completely automates and streamlines this process. So in this blog post I’m going to show you how to use Google Forms to automate your data collection, job applications, surveys, etc!

It’s Google Forms, and here’s the Quick Start Guide:

Watch this short video first:

Go to https://docs.google.com/forms/

• Click on the big red “+” button (bottom right) to CREATE A NEW FORM
• Give your form a heading
• Start adding your fields, one by one, choosing the type of field for each
• Click on “SEND FORM” to set up the form and automatically generate an excel sheet to collect your responses (one field per column) 
• Share your link (if emailing) or copy the “embed code” (to put the form on your website)

Have you used Google forms? If not, give it a go. I wish I’d got my head round this years ago – it would have saved a huge amount of time!