The Interfolio Blog

For aspiring graduate students and future tenured Professors, the year 2010 will be remembered as the dawning of the Online Application Age.

These applications are powerful software systems optimized for applicant tracking.  For those managing an admissions or hiring process, these online applications allow administrators to collect and manage data in a more organized way.  

Often, these systems collect recommendation letters online too.  

For Professors that write letters for their students, that process is, in many cases, a point of real frustration.  It often means tedious data entry because they are asked to log into each individual application to upload letters again and again. We’ve spoken to and emailed with our writers about this problem and we are using their feedback to map out some enhancements to the way that we interact with these systems.

As a credentials management company, does this change the game for Interfolio?  Sure it does but we’re nothing if not flexible and responsive to the market. 

Last year, when we noticed this trend, we released a feature called web delivery [update: we've renamed this feature, Online Application Delivery].  Essentially, our software generates a unique email address for every recommendation letter in your Interfolio account, whether you realize it or not.  When your next online application asks you to enter an email address of your writer, you can enter the unique document email address found on your Document Details page instead. It’s simple, quick, and it cuts down on a lot of hassle for your writers.

Don’t worry: we’re still going to support paper and email deliveries for the foreseeable future.  However, if we need to tweak our system to accommodate the Online Application Age, you can count on us  to do so.

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