Millions of scholars have elevated their academic journey by using Interfolio’s Dossier to pursue academic jobs, medical programs, and graduate degrees. With tools to help gather, store, and deliver essential materials, it’s clear why so many scholars trust Interfolio with their career aspirations.
Whether you’re just getting started with Dossier or have used the service previously, these best practices will help you confidently utilize the contacts, archiving, collections, and sharing features as you pursue your next opportunity.
Add Contacts Before Requesting Letters of Recommendation
The process for requesting letters is simple and includes saving your letter writers as contacts within your account. You will need to add your letter writers as contacts, which you can do either via the “My Contacts” page or while creating a new letter request.
To add a contact to your Dossier, log in and click on your name in the top right-hand corner of your account. Click My Contacts and then the “Add Contact” button.
We suggest saving your letter writers in your account before you start working on applications to streamline your process. We also encourage you to communicate with your letter writers ahead of time so that they expect your request.
Some things you should consider communicating to your letter writer are:
- The number of requests you plan to send
- Any requirements for the actual letter, like if you need a letterhead or signature
- If you want the letter to be a general letter for multiple uses or specific to one application
Looking for step-by-step instructions? Here is a detailed walkthrough of how to add your letter writers as contacts.
Make Use of the Ability to Archive Your Materials
You have the ability to archive any document in your account. Archiving is different than deleting a document—archiving simply removes it from the list of active documents. When you create a delivery or work on an application, you only see a list of active materials.
Why is this helpful? If you find yourself with a multitude of documents in your Dossier, consider archiving older versions. If you ever archive a document and want to use it in the future, you can always move it back to your list of active documents.
You can find some helpful articles about archiving and storing your materials here.
Organize Your Materials Using Collections
Creating a collection allows you to group documents together for easy reference. For example, if you have a set of documents that you want to use for applying to faculty positions, you can create a “Faculty” collection that contains the documents specific to that position. Likewise, if you have a set of documents that’s better suited for fellowship applications, you can create a “Fellowship” collection to access when applying to those opportunities. You can also share collections of your materials with collaborators and mentors anywhere.
You can find a walkthrough of creating a collection here.
Use the Sharing Feature to Get Feedback on Your Dossier
(Note that this feature is only available to Dossier Deliver users. Upgrade to Dossier Deliver here.)
The sharing feature gives users a way to collect feedback on academic materials from anyone, anywhere—including documentation of research, creative production, teaching, or service—without leaving the Interfolio environment where your work is stored. This feature accommodates ongoing input on academic case materials, whether outside of a formal institutional workflow or as part of one, such as in the case of a mentoring letter.
In order to share materials with someone, you’ll need to add them as a contact, just like you have done for your letter writers. When you share a document with someone, they do not have to create an account—they’ll be provided with a link that goes directly to the materials you’ve shared with them.
Here are some more details on sharing your materials for feedback.
Interfolio’s Dossier enables scholars to collect, curate, polish, and send out their materials at all stages throughout their academic professional path. Learn more about Dossier here.
Build Your Dossier With Interfolio.
Advance With Confidence.
Applying for academic programs or positions requires many artifacts. Put your best foot forward with Interfolio.
Start building your dossier for free today.