Last week we launched a new Dossier product feature in our ongoing quest to save our user’s time, and so that we maintain our exclusive offering as a full-service Dossier. We received feedback that the process of requesting a letter of recommendation through Interfolio could be confusing and unintuitive. In response we’ve enhanced the user experience working with our product design team.
Here are the changes we’ve made:
- Instead of having a blank “Recommender” search field, you will now have two options: “Choose Existing Contact” or “Add New Contact.”
- In the default option shown, when you select “Choose Existing Contact,” a drop-down menu will display all of your existing contacts.
- The “Add New Contact” option will allow you to add a new contact.
We’ve made this change due to user feedback—it clarifies that a letter request has to go to a particular contact.Once you’ve selected the contact that you want to send the request to, you are ready to do so.
We encourage you to add more detail and personalization to the request, but the only requirement of sending a request for a letter of recommendation is providing the contact information of your recommender. Here is a link to a help article that fills in more of the details.
How do these changes impact me?
First and foremost, it saves you time. It is far more convenient to simply select saved information than to type it in from scratch for every request. In addition, it helps to avoid errors in email addresses and names. Requesting and sending letters of recommendation is a stressful but necessary part of applying to many scholarly positions and other opportunities. Let Interfolio help you manage this portion of your to-do list, confidently and confidentially.
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.