The Interfolio Blog

This summer, we’ve seen a big increase the number of Interfolio users who are applying to dental school.  If you are applying to dental school, you can use Interfolio to send your letters of recommendation to AADSAS.

This year, AADSAS requires that Interfolio deliveries be sent to them via paper.  However, we’re working with them to streamline the process for next year.

To send your recommendation letters from Interfolio to AADSAS, you will need to collect these documents in your Interfolio account:

• Letters of recommendation from at least three professional contacts. 
• Corresponding AADSAS matching forms for each writer.

If you need help figuring out how to request your letters of recommendation using Interfolio, we have a lot of information in our Help Center.  For those new to our process, I encourage you to review this article.

Once you have requested your letters, you are ready to collect your AADSAS matching forms.  To generate your AADSAS forms, you will log into your dental application and navigate to the “Evaluators” section.  You will need to generate a separate form for each evaluator.  These forms will be printed, signed and faxed to us at (202)-403-3783.  If you have access to a scanner, you can upload the forms to your account electronically. Once the signed documents are scanned in, you will need to repeat this process for each AADSAS form.

Once you have all of your letters and matching forms stored within your account, you will be able to create a delivery by doing the following:

• Log into Interfolio, navigate to the “Delivery” tab and select “Add Delivery”.  In step one of the process, search for AADSAS and select it as the receiving destination.
• In step two, add the letters of recommendation and corresponding matching forms that you have collected in your Interfolio account.
• Finally, you will click the orange “Check Out” button at the bottom of the page and choose one of the paper options as your delivery method.

Then, our Operations team will assemble your requested documents and ship them out accordingly. And, that’s it; you are now on your way to filling cavities, prescribing your first set of dentures and reminding your patients to floss regularly.

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For many, the summer months are defined by barbecues, swimming pools and extra time with family and friends.  At our office, we use this period to prepare for the fall, a season that traditionally produces more document processing and delivery requests, and support inquiries than any other quarter.

To give you an idea of this shift in volume, total customer support inquiries increased 153% between the summer and fall of 2009.  Yes, it’s that substantial.

While our peers are grilling up a steak, working on their backstroke and visiting with distant relatives, our team is preparing for the coming onslaught that begins in September.  How exactly does Interfolio prepare? I’ve listed three significant ways below.

1. We review our printers. As our support volume suggests, the fall is a season of increased member activity. This includes the processing of Interfolio deliveries, which a re often printed and sorted by our Operations team. This summer, our team determined that it was time to upgrade our printing capabilities.  In the fall, our new printer (yet to be nicknamed) will be printing your deliveries at about 100 pages a minute.
2. We staff our teams. The before mentioned increase in support volume means that our phone and email inboxes will be overflowing with calls and messages.  Because we expect the support volume to increase even more this fall, we’ll have more staff dedicated to answering our phones and typing away on email than ever before.
3. We review our software. During the summer, our technical team is concentrating on releasing new features – some of which you will see and some you won’t – that are focused on increasing the quality of our user experience.  After rigorous testing by our entire team, the new enhancements are released and incorporated into our products.

The summer months are expiring quickly and as they do, we approach the fall more prepared than ever before. It even looks like there might be room for a little swimming and barbecuing. In fact, I’ll be on vacation all of next week.

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As the User Experience Designer at Interfolio, I design and implement the interfaces that our members interact with within our products.  When we launched the Portfolio, our professional website building tool for academics, we did so with the goal of making it super simple to create a great looking story of your work. We find it especially exciting to see how some of our power users are sharing their best work using our tools, and here I will highlight five portfolios that exemplify an effective and attractive showcase. 

1. Sally Stamper - A Personal Touch. Sally has clearly put a lot of thought and effort into creating her portfolio, as you can tell from the wide variety of content, generous use of visuals, and links to outside resources. The vast selection of content she shows can really captivate the interested reader. In particular, I like how she has used pictures of herself in the teaching environment. You may not feel comfortable using lots of pictures of yourself, or you may feel like it doesn’t add a lot to your presentation to have them...but to an outside reviewer, pictures of you can really help bring your Portfolio to life and enable the reader to personally identify with you.
2. Perzavia Praylow - A Showcase of Fine Work. Perzavia’s portfolio highlights her work and education especially well. She shows a thorough sampling of her education, work experience and personal interests that give the viewer a great picture of who she is and what she’s capable of -- both important pieces of information for hiring managers and search committees. She showcases her documents effectively by including descriptive abstracts ahead of the actual document attachment, which helps the reader quickly get the gist of the content that will be displayed before deciding to drill down for more detail. Also, she selectively uses high quality photos to add visual interest and real life examples of what she does.
3. Jack Nummerdor III - References and Validation. Jack offers a prime example of a teaching portfolio. Like Perzavia, he displays a thorough outline of his work, from placement evaluations and lesson plans to examples of his research at specific institutions, and personal interests. Showing actual selections of his work, and then backing it up with student teaching evaluations and letters of recommendation, can give the reviewer real confidence in his abilities. This opportunity to view his work in depth is compelling to anyone considering him for a position or searching for him online, because they’ll feel that they understand what he has to offer.
4. Jason Bush - Doing a Lot With a Little. Jason shows that even a small portfolio can be effective at showcasing your work. With just three pages, he has given a well rounded view of his educational background and accomplishments. By creating longer pages, he has fit a generous amount of information into these three pages. He has used attractive photos of his creative work - in this case a picture is truly worth a thousand words. He has made sure that all bases are covered by publishing his essays, and of course, including an essential copy of his CV.
5. Dr. Daniel Bernard - Structured and Organized. Dr. Bernard’s portfolio is sophisticated and professional; he has maximized a smaller portfolio of five pages by structuring one page for each topical area. This organization makes his portfolio easy to navigate and digest. The “News” page shows upcoming events in which he’ll participate, which gives the portfolio a feeling of being active and current. The title “Samples” is deceptively simple, because he shows great-looking video clips of his presentations along with his papers, dissertation and syllabi. He also offers links to his other work and interests online, which give interested readers more information to explore.

These are just a small sample of the many interesting and beautiful portfolios our members are creating, I hope they have inspired you to create a Portfolio or enhance your own in new and exciting ways!

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