In “Preparing NOW for Next Year’s Job Market”, Brian Croxall discussed the benefits and provided some examples of preparing your materials for next year’s job market. In this post, I will discuss the enormously helpful and most highly recommended dossier and credential management service, Interfolio.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am an Interfolio user as are several other ProfHacker authors. None of us have received a thing for writing this particular post in the Chronicle space. In fact, I reckon that all of us combined have paid Interfolio several hundreds of dollars, despite having other document management services available to us from our respective institutions.
My reason for writing this post is two-fold: first, to introduce Interfolio to potential job-seekers otherwise unaware of its presence, and second, to give a little free publicity to a group that really gets it when it comes to the academic job market and its intricacies (and idiosyncrasies). Also, they have top-notch customer service; there are real people behind those e-mail addresses, the Facebook page, and the Twitter account. In fact, I signed up for Interfolio approximately one second after I saw a fellow grad student cry out in frustration on Twitter and have an Interfolio representative come to their rescue, after business hours (and I think on a Saturday, too), to make sure that their document made it to its destination on time.
Interfolio offers two separate services: a Portfolio service that allows you to manage an online identity complete with publicly-accessible documents, and a Dossier service that allows you to:
- Request, receive, and manage confidential letters of recommendation
- Store professional documents
- Create custom packages of documents in response to those 5, 10, or 100 job ads all requiring different material
- Deliver your documents electronically or in print
- Track the progress of document preparation and delivery
For a complete overview of the document management process from the perspective of a job applicant, I recommend this brief sequence of screenshots or this video.
For document management and delivery, you must purchase a basic Interfolio account: currently, one year of service is $19, three years is $39.90, and five years is $57.00. When I went on the market in Fall of 2009, I signed up for a three year account—I was being realistic about the job market, after all (plus, it was a 30% savings!). All accounts include the standard Interfolio treatment: customizable deliveries, phone and e-mail support, and the ability to store up to 250MB of files. Also, Interfolio will scan any paper document for you and add it to your account, at no additional charge. Don’t have access to a scanner, and don’t have access to an original document, yet you need that document to appear in electronic form? Send it to Interfolio to scan.
Once you have your documents uploaded to Interfolio—and that includes specific cover letters for individual jobs, writing samples tailored to particular jobs, and so on—you can create a delivery package. Let’s say I wanted to apply for a job at ProfHacker University and the search committee chair wanted to see my CV, three letters of recommendation, a writing sample, and a teaching statement. Suppose I plan to use a generic CV, writing sample, and teaching statement, and those were already uploaded to my Interfolio account. I would then need to write a custom cover letter for ProfHacker University and upload that to my Interfolio account. To create a delivery, I would check a few boxes to add these documents to the package, then select my delivery method, fill out the recipient information, and pay the additional cost. All deliveries cost something in addition to your standard annual fee; all manner of electronic deliveries are $4 no matter the size, and paper deliveries range from $6 (standard US domestic delivery) to $45 (International 2-day delivery) for envelopes containing up to 20 pages ($1 per 20 pages over the first 20, so an envelope with 38 pages in it would cost $7 for standard US domestic delivery, $13 for US Priority delivery, and so on).
Oh wait—letters of recommendation! Interfolio manages confidential letters by allowing you to send a request to a letter writer. That letter writer would then login to the Interfolio system and upload their letter. As the requestor, you would see that the letter has been submitted and is available for you to send in your package, but you will not be able to see it (it is confidential, after all). Interfolio provides extensive help for letter writers; letter writers can create accounts for free (if all they are doing is submitting letters).
Interfolio has been in business since 1999, and has partnered with numerous institutions to handle their dossier service for alumni. For example, Brown University recently switched to Interfolio after previously managing this service in-house. I am sure Brown is but one of many institutions who have done the same.
Since all of my praise for Interfolio comes from the perspective of a recent graduate, I asked my dissertation committee chair and general all-around academic advisor to offer her thoughts on Interfolio as a letter writer and recipient of materials for job searches. Here’s what Augusta Rohrbach (Department of English, Washington State University) has to say about Interfolio:
I love Interfolio! Back in the day, when I was a graduate student at Columbia, the worst part of the job market was making sure letters were submitted and dossiers went out. Despite the best efforts of many very fine people, something always went wrong. Unfortunately, there are even worse aspects of the job market now…um, like, even fewer jobs!
But at least you won’t be disqualified from a job search because your dossier never arrived (yes, that happened to me). With Interfolio, I have yet to hear from any of my students, friends, or colleagues of mishaps, failures to deliver dossiers, or misfiled letters. I also like the transparency of Interfolio—the system lets the user know that a letter has been uploaded, saving everyone the trouble of wondering, emailing (again), and just generally feeling like a pest. I believe, together with the job wikis people are using to gauge search timelines while departments go mum, Interfolio has reduced unnecessary snafus and the stress that increases exponentially as a result.
I’m happy to give Interfolio my money because they’ve proven time and again that they deliver on their promises. If something goes wrong, they will do everything in their power to fix it. So, if you’re taking Brian’s advice preparing now for next year’s job market, why not give Interfolio a whirl?
Have you used Interfolio or are curious about their services? Do you have questions about using a document management service in general? Ask in the comments—if we don’t know the answer we’ll find someone who does!
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12 Responses to Using Interfolio to Manage Your Professional Documents
stlgrad - May 18, 2010 at 6:30 pm
So, let’s say I get a subscription to Interfolio for a year. It lapses for a period of weeks or months when I overlook renewing the subscription. (Let’s imagine that I’ve overlooked that detail while on a luxurious vacation–but I’d been too stingy originally to get a longer contract.) Would I then have to reestablish my entire account? Re-scan documents? Or would they perhaps be able to find the materials in an archive?
jcmeloni - May 18, 2010 at 7:03 pm
@stlgrad My understanding is that when an account is closed (or lapses) they move everything off the active servers to a storage server. They keep all your stuff for a certain number of years — five, I believe. You can reactivate your account and essentially get all your stuff back to its original state by contacting them via phone or email to start that process (IOW, don’t just sign up for a new account). I’d ask them for sure, though, but that’s my understanding.
briancroxall - May 18, 2010 at 9:46 pm
I’ll go ahead and pile on an enthusiastic recommendation for Interfolio. I used my school’s in-house dossier service for my first run at the job market and that experience was…frustrating. I used Interfolio for the last two job market seasons and have been more than pleased with the service. It *does* cost just a little bit more than my institution’s service costs, but that service was primarily for delivering letters of recommendation. And that meant that I would still be paying the postal service to deliver all of the other materials as well as having to go through the hassle of printing the materials, addressing the envelope, and going to the post office. (I do recognize that the preceding makes me sound very lazy. But when you’re in the thick of the job market, every little second you can spare really does help!)I want to add two important points to what Julie has already said. First, letter writers need not use Interfolio’s online system; instead they can mail the letter to Interfolio and have it scanned in-house. To do this, you simply provide your writer with a cover sheet that you print off from the Interfolio site. The letter writer includes this cover sheet with the letter, and–presto!–you’ll have a scanned copy within a few days of it being mailed. (Again, you never see the confidential letters.) Second–and this is huge–, you can use Interfolio to manage transcripts. In other words, you can pay to have your school mail a transcript to Interfolio. Again, you’ll provide a cover sheet, which the registrar can include. Interfolio will scan the transcript and add it to your file. It’s then easy to add a transcript with a single click to your file. This means you’ve got one less trip to make (to the registrar’s office) and you save time again with getting a dossier out since the registrar’s office can understandably get slammed. And after a while, you also start saving money by not paying for those transcripts. Interfolio makes it very clear that the transcripts they have scanned are official and that they have never been handled by students. And I’ve never had an institution ask for “real” transcripts after I’ve sent them by Interfolio. But if they did, it would not be too bad to accomodate that one school.
rtalbert - May 19, 2010 at 9:11 am
The last time I was on the job market, it was a “transitional” search where I was already employed and applying to only 6-7 institutions. So the whole document management end of things was not so bad. Would any of you Interfolio users care to comment on the value of Interfolio versus just doing things yourself in that kind of small-scale search?
templar - May 19, 2010 at 10:49 am
I’ve used Interfolio for sending out recommendations and transcripts in the past (per my school’s general practice), but never thought of the idea of sending the whole packet (including my own materials) as Julie mentions here, partly because I’ve always heard great stress placed on the “correct” (i.e. conventional) physicality of those documents — the right weight paper for the letter, the actual (color) letterhead, etc. I’m not personally hung up on those things, but can anyone out there speak from experience on how much emphasis committees place on them — particularly, perhaps, in more conventional and/or non-digital humanities fields?
briancroxall - May 19, 2010 at 11:09 am
@templar Having never sat on a hiring committee, I cannot comment on how much the physicality of the materials matters from personal experience. But I have been told numerous times by advisors that the only person who sees the original documents tends to be a department admin staff person, who opens the envelopes and makes photocopies for all of the committee members. And in that case, the lovely letterhead and 24 lb. paper becomes a moot point.But I’d love to hear from others on this point.
templar - May 19, 2010 at 11:40 am
@ briancroxall That’s exactly what I’ve always heard as well, but often from the same people who are recommending the fancy print version, and it’s never quite clear where the calculus between the two methods comes down. This strikes me as one of those intangibles (pun intended) that cause much obsession in the job search, so it would be great to hear from others about this.
archaeo42 - May 19, 2010 at 12:49 pm
I’m just curious as to how this works if the institution has an online application system they’re requiring you to use to submit materials. Is Interfolio still useful for this or not? The majority of applications I sent out this year were electronic–I think I mailed maybe 4 or 5 hard copy applications out of the 15 or so jobs I’ve applied for.
billso - May 19, 2010 at 5:17 pm
This looks very interesting. Online storage would be helpful for retaining documents, and the ability to send and get documents via paper or soft copy is a plus – and another way for the company to earn revenue. The 250MB limit seems a bit small.
drmenyweather - May 20, 2010 at 2:17 am
I have used Interfolio since Fall 2008 and especially 2009. The service has been more than excellent. They watches your storage limit and if more is needed they will notify you before your material is lost. Excellent story, cost effective.
jmeloni - May 20, 2010 at 6:49 am
@briancroxall Thanks for adding the info on transcripts, which I completely forgot about because none of my apps required that piece at the outset. D’oh!@rtalbert A good question. IMHO, Interfolio is best when you’re managing multiple applications over a long season, and are reusing assets. If you have a small set of apps that you can do in a day and handle the administrative aspects of it yourself, then no, the numbers wouldn’t work out for Interfolio to be a benefit. It comes down to time to devote to the project, and how many apps you are sending out, and over what length of time, I think.@templar I remember the days when fancy paper was something that set you apart in a job search (non-academic version) and understand the sentiment and history behind caring about such things. But I’ll echo what Brian said — I’ve been told (and seen) that the administrative staff is the first point of contact for paper, and the packets get photocopied (or digitized) for easy sharing with committee members. The fancy paper doesn’t matter at that point.@archaeo42 Interfolio does have several hooks and processes in place for working with your assets and institutional HR systems online. For specific examples, it’s best to contact them and just ask how that works…and the interaction between the HR site and the hiring department is often disjointed such that you sometimes put some stuff in the HR system and some gets sent to the department, etc (differs by discipline, probably) and in that case Interfolio would be able to handle the regular delivery portion, for sure.
nuenglish - May 20, 2010 at 8:44 am
@templar: I’m an English Department chair. Because of logistics (overburdened secretary), I open all the documents we receive in a job search myself. Then I scan them, upload onto the department’s secure server, and make available to colleagues that way. Most colleagues here prefer the online format–fewer files getting temporarily misplaced internally (e.g., taken home for reading, and forgotten in Monday morning’s rush out the door). Environmentally friendly, to boot. As a recipient (rather than sender) I too have found Interfolio’s handling of all things to be impeccable. A great plus is that our institution accepts the “certified original” transcripts included in an Interfolio packet as the equivalent of those sent directly from the candidate’s degree-granting school(s).If anyone has qualms about sending wholly e-apps, it’s perhaps worth sending out a brief query to the place you’re applying, something to the effect of “Is a completely electronic package from Interfolio acceptable?”