Online Applications As Always

Here it's December already and I haven't posted this year's installment of our annual "Mr. Zero Complains About On-Line Applications" series. Sorry for the delay; here it is.

The trend for the past several years has been for increasing numbers of search committees to accept applications online. Things seem to have stalled out this year, though. At least, for me they did. This year, like last year, approximately three quarters of my applications involved submitting some material online; most of these were all-online applications. Only a couple wanted me to send any hard copies of anything.

However, this year was unlike last year in that there were a lot of online delivery-systems represented. Normally there's this one software package that every college and university's HR department subscribes to, and is terrible. This year, I would say that only about half of my online apps utilized this software, and the rest was split between Interfolio and Academic Jobs Online, with Interfolio prevailing slightly. In prior years, I'd had at most one or two online applications that utilized some other software (per year, that is).

What I have always hated about that HR-BS-ware is that it's so redundant. You have to make a new account for every school, type in your name and address every time (though your browser's auto-fill makes this go a little easier), enter all the email addresses of all your letter-writers every time, and then upload all your documents again, every time. It gets extremely tedious. (Although there were a number of places where I didn't have to do most of that because I'd applied for a job there before. Which means that they could have saved us both a bunch of time and effort by just hiring me back then.)

I didn't realize it, but I had used Academic Jobs Online before--I was surprised when logging in to discover that I already had an account. I thought it was pretty ok. It doesn't have a very nice user-interface--it has the kind of UI that someone who does math for a living might design--but it did the job fine and I didn't have any trouble using it. And I liked that it saved most of the data I had entered, including my address, qualifications, degree dates, AOS & AOCs, etc, so I didn't have to keep re-entering it. It also saves the documents you uploaded for earlier applications, so you don't have to keep re-uploading them, too. That's a nice time-saver. No major complaints.

I had never used Interfolio before, for real this time. My impression was that it was the best of the three. It saved the basic data so I didn't have to keep re-entering it. It saved the documents so I didn't have to keep uploading them, either. It has a nice, user-friendly UI. But the thing that I really, really, really like about it is this: it saves your letters of recommendation, so your letter-writers don't have to keep getting emails every single time you apply for a job. They won't be bothered. They won't forget to respond. They won't miss them when they get caught by the spam filter.

This makes Interfolio the winner. It is my hope that Interfolio catches on amongst hiring departments. Of course, I will never pay for a membership to Interfolio. If search committees want me to use Academic Jobs Online or their HR-departments bullshit software, I'll use it. Whatever. And if they want a hard copy of the application, I'll mail it myself. But of the three major online systems, I prefer Interfolio because it's tied for easiest on my, and is the hands-down winner for easiest on letter writers.

--Mr. Zero