How to organize your hiring pipeline?

How should a small startup organize their hiring pipeline? We're a team of 8 so don't have a dedicated HR person. Way too early for that. So we keep an excel file to manage candidates we interview. It gets hectic when you need to reference emails send and received from each of those candidates, resumes, etc.

What's the easiest way to manage this without spending a great deal of money on an HR solution?

We started with just an excel file as well and kept it simple with tools like Trello.

I now prefer to use Streak to still keep things simple, yet have the workflow integrated into gmail (which allows for linking a candidate's emails to their entry in the pipeline).

Streak is free to use at the moment with Pro plans on the way. I just hope they start making money and don't end up getting aqui-hired. I love their product.

You can customize Streak's simple pipeline for pretty much anything. I use it for both hiring and keeping track of leads for Emprivo's consulting side.