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Interfolio costs

Brian Leiter

A job seeker writes:

I hope that you can find the time in the coming days to blog about the current state of the academic job market vis-a-vis the exorbitant rates that interfolio charges for uploading letters vs emailing them. This problem would seem to have a rather easy solution though a consensus on the problem itself would be needed before it could be implemented. 

The problem, in short, is this. Interfolio charges 4$ per letter to upload letters to application websites. This means that a typical student who has 5 committee members and one teaching letter is paying 24$ to send out a single application in most cases. Multiply this by the 50 or so applications a student will send out and the price of uploading letters alone costs 1200$. Given that you have written about the high costs of traveling to the APA this issue would appear to be on par with that one.

Obviously there are issues of justice here as well. Those with deep pockets can afford to send out more applications and upload a greater number of letters than those without who must be more judicious. The result is two tiered system that favors the already fortunate.

Frankly, I don't see how Interfolio justifies charging 24$ and up for pressing 'send' but this issue has ben cropping up again and again on my FB feed and in conversation. Further there seems an easy solution. Job posters could use interfolio for the application procedure thus minimizing costs or they should be encouraged to include an email in the ad where letters can be sent for far less than the upload fee. 

Thoughts from readers?

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26 responses to “Interfolio costs”

  1. job seeker

    There is another option. One could send her letters directly to the department apart form the online application (either to the department administrator or the head of the SC). This only costs $6 on Interfolio, regardless of how many letters you are sending. Is this frowned upon? If so, why?

    Reply
  2. anonjobseeker

    To be fair, Interfolio only charges $4.00 per letter for applications where they must upload your letters to an application site unique to the university; also the first letter is only $1.00, letters 2 through whatever are $4.00 a piece. There's more to just pressing 'send' in these cases. A person needs to actually upload each letter to the specific site.

    But I've complained about this too (I have 7 letters!). The problem is that if you have Interfolio send your letters electronically to an e-mail address of someone on the committee (or to a staff member), which costs just $6.00 total, your application might be deemed 'incomplete', given that you haven't had letters uploaded. Fortunately, lots of jobs don't use application sites of this kind, which means that for lots of jobs the cost isn't too bad.

    Other than having schools not use such sites in the future, or having Interfolio revert to its old policy ($6 for the first letter, and then $1 for each after that), I don't know how to solve this problem.

    Reply
  3. Margaret Atherton

    Job seekers should consider that members of the APA get the first year of membership to Interfolio's Dossier for job candidates for free. Once I don't have students who go on the job market, I don't know if this helps with the problem being discussed, but I hope it is useful information.

    Reply
  4. Jamin Asay

    This is yet another reason why hiring departments should use AcademicJobsOnline.org. Applicants only have to upload their dossiers once, and at no charge. In any event, I hope that departments that are hiring familiarize themselves with the costs that applicants face in applying to their jobs, and do what they can to minimize those costs whenever feasible (by, for example, accepting emailed instead of uploaded letters, as suggested in first comment.)

    Reply
  5. Matt King

    As a recent sufferer of the job market, I am all for departments (and the profession) doing all they can to reduce the burden on job seekers. Additionally, given the APA's partnership with Interfolio, we should really try to seek some standardization to mitigate these kinds of difficulties.

    That said, my understanding is that the reason uploading letters to websites is more expensive than other means is because an actual human has to do the uploading, rather than it being part of the usual automated process. I can't claim this justifies the increased expense, but that is the rationale as I understand it.

    A potential workaround, though it won't work it all cases, is to have one's placement officer or other appropriate person combine all of one's letters into a single pdf. Interfolio then counts that as a single letter, but it has all of one's letters in the file. Having not used Interfolio this year, the changes they've made may make this tactic obsolete. But it can work to artificially "reduce" the number of letters Interfolio charges for, without reducing the actual set.

    Reply
  6. anonjobseeker

    I mentioned the 'actual human has to do the uploading' in my post. I also alluded to the problem with your suggestion of combining all of one's letters into a single pdf. It seems like there's a good chance that the system will deem the application incomplete, given that three required letters are not uploaded.

    Reply
  7. anonjobseeker

    This just means that signing up for an account is free. The costs for sending out each application is not free and, as noted by the original poster, can get VERY high.

    Reply
  8. Matt Drabek

    Unless there's something I'm missing, Interfolio does not charge only $1 for the first letter. In the applications I've submitted, they've charged $4 for *each* letter, including the first. Can other folks confirm/deny this?

    But I guess one question I have is: do folks really need 6-7 letter-writers, *especially* if those letter-writers are all members of the dissertation committee or teaching references? I have 4 letter-writers, and highly considered asking a 5th person who was outside my university. But, honestly, had I asked that 4th person, I probably would have dropped one of the other 4. It just seems to me that there's no reason for most job candidates to have that many letter-writers.

    Reply
  9. Neal Tognazzini

    The $4 per uploaded letter not only seems quite expensive, and thus seems like an unfair burden on job seekers, but it also seems like it charges the wrong party for the convenience that Interfolio provides. Correct me if I'm wrong, but having one's letters sent via Interfolio is not more convenient for the student; it's more convenient for the student's letter-writers, since they don't have to respond to an onslaught of emails. So why are students being made to pay for something that only benefits their letter-writers? Alternatively, you might think that the placement officer at the student's PhD institution is responsible for sending the letters, in which case it is the student's institution that is benefitting from Interfolio, and so it is the student's institution that should bear the financial burden.

    Reply
  10. Lowly Job Applicant

    That sounds right to me, too, and I've wondered whether we shouldn't be putting down our letter writers' actual email addresses, rather than the unique email address Interfolio sets up for each letter, so that HR departments are directly emailing our letter writers. This might produce enough aggravation in people who have the clout to make changes happen, rather than in lowly job applicants who have no pull whatsoever.

    Reply
  11. Fritz Allhoff

    Having been on search committees, some applicants just have the office staff upload letters, too. So when it asks for reference emails, they just put philosophy@myschool.edu and those requests get redirected to the office. If–as other people have noted–the letters are merged to a single file, the uploading is pretty simple. Even if some places would bounce it for being incomplete, the same file (i.e., with multiple letters) can be uploaded several times (i.e., put the same email address in each field). If the department makes some dedicated email address for this (e.g., jobplacement.philosophy@myschool.edu), it's like 15 minutes a day for some administrator. (Or even further filters might speed it up: billsmith.job.philosophy@myschool.edu spools all of Bill's requests to the same folder so the administrator doesn't have to figure out which files go where.) I think the administrative burdens are low enough and the cost savings high enough (e.g., $10,000 to department's students or more) than it's an easy sell. More generally, there are creative solutions to figure out a lot of this stuff.

    Reply
  12. JDN

    Matt,
    I do not think you need more than four letters. You may want at least one of those letters from someone outside your own university. Indeed, I would recommend it. Some think such a letter is bound to be more objective. But at one point the extra letters add little value, and may even work against you.

    Reply
  13. Sebastian Lutz

    Yes, I cannot agree more. Academicjobsonline is the much cheaper option for job candidates, and what is more, even for departments if they use the new free eDelivery service: It's free for employers and applicants (see http://academicjobsonline.org/ajo , News & Announcements, 05/30/2013 yu to all).

    I also like their overall system much more, although that, of course, is just my preference.

    Reply
  14. Matt Drabek

    Hi JDN. That's what I thought. It's just that a few commenters above said they have 6 or 7 writers, which adds quite the extra burden in Interfolio costs at 4 bucks a pop. I was speculating that this is probably rather unusual and that most job candidates probably have 3-4 writers (which comes out to 12-16 dollars for each school, rather than 24-28 dollars).

    Reply
  15. Anonymous Coward

    In my PGR-top-10 department, the University administration forbade department staff from doing what Fritz suggests here, claiming it was too expensive. The department now gives us an (insufficient but fairly decent) allowance for market expenses, which (at least partially) compensates for Interfolio's bill if not for the hours we spend dealing with this sort of thing.

    The person who mentioned Academic Jobs Online has this right: academicjobsonline.org is the answer. From the website:

    "Free eDelivery Service. We are happy to announce our new free eDelivery service. This service is to help applicants deliver application materials, including the reference letters, to employers who are not currently using our full online services. It saves applicants in dossier delivery costs, simplifies the letter management for the reference writers, and it's totally free for both employers and applicants. To use this service, an employer just needs to sign up. … Employers, let's all work together to make academic job applications less costly for the applicants."

    Death to Interfolio! Long live Academic Jobs Online!

    Reply
  16. D

    I'm just not applying to interfolio departments. I can't afford to.

    Reply
  17. Mark van Roojen

    So you are really suggesting that candidates should do their best to aggravate the people who are writing their reference letters so as to . . . ?

    Departments should (if they have the resources) provide candidates with a dossier service that can put a dossier together in a professional way and get it to the hiring department in a form the hiring department will accept, thereby allowing candidates not to have to use Interfolio. Hiring departments shouldn't force candidates to use Interfolio – at least if those departments have any control over the rules set by the larger institution of which they are a part (they may not).

    But how making the lives of your referees miserable will help change the rules of institutions at which those referees don't work is opaque to me at best.

    Reply
  18. 2013 Job Seeker

    Some anecdotal conversations have lead me to believe that many are curious but unaware of the best/worst application formats. I thought it might be helpful to provide a simple ranking as of the 2013 market. Here are some common application types ranked in order of job-seeker preference (on the assumption that the job-seeker uses Interfolio for letters as is common):

    1. A department receives applications through Interfolio: Free for job seekers with APA supported membership. This is the easiest and best thing for job seekers.

    2. A department receives applications through AJO: Free for job seekers, after paying a one-time fee to upload $4 per letter sent to AJO from Interfolio. Still very good for job seekers.

    3. A department receives applications through Email: Job seekers pay $6 total for all files sent from Interfolio. Affordable but begins to add up.

    4. A department receives applications through Mail: Interfolio charges approx $17 for priority shipping for 100 pages of documents. More expensive, more difficult to meet deadlines. Few departments collect applications in this way.

    5. A department receives applications through HR-Websites: This is the *worst* thing for job seekers. It's time consuming. It's also very expensive if this is how letters are collected ($4 for each letter billed individually from Interfolio). Platforms and document uploading processes are inflexible and slow. Often times they cap the number of letters at 3-5.

    **I suspect many departments are not given a choice about using an HR-Website application format. However even in this case it would be very helpful if possible to collect letters specifically by some other means (Email or AJO). Doing so would radically cut applicant costs.

    Lastly one other thing, in general departments should do a better job at filling in their adds on PhilJobs. Many do not include basic items like department links or physical addresses and would also do well to add more details about the advertised positions.

    Reply
  19. harry b

    Further to Mark van Roojen's point: Just as info, it takes about a day to write a letter of rec for a job, if you do it well. Sometimes longer. (Sometimes, if the candidate is stellar, and you know them inside out intellectually, it takes less time). Don't try to piss off someone who is doing that for you. In addition, typically, that professor is going to be spending a great deal of time in November through end of December uploading tons of letters to various websites for prospective graduate students, who are applying to multiple schools. And, if the staff person does upload letters for you, as per dept policy, be grateful and appreciative to them. Its not fun work, and it does demand considerable attention (because the sites screw up often enough).

    On the letters. Most professions do a screening first, and then ask for letters only for candidates on a shortlist. And most specify a cap on the number of letters they will consider (3 is standard). This would simplify things, with no loss, and possibly some gain, in terms of quality of decisionmaking.

    Reply
  20. Lowly Job Applicant

    Actually, what I was suggesting is that, if we want Interfolio to change their pricing options, complaints from job applicants ain't gonna do it. But complaints from tenured faculty, full professors, people with name recognition might. I wasn't suggesting, however, that we cavalierly just start directing HR departments to email our letter writers just to make them angry. If job applicants explain to their letter writers that, in the past, it was possible to have letters forwarded to HR departments by Interfolio in a fairly cost-efficient way, but that now it's just not possible anymore ($12-$20 a pop now vs. $6-$10 a pop last year), then letter writers sensitive to the added burden are likely going to be willing to take on the additional inconvenience for the sake of the applicant. But surely one or a few of these letter writers will be as offended as job applicants are by the increase in pricing and perhaps motivated to press Interfolio for answers. Alternatively, there might be even a greater push for switching over fully to AJO.

    Reply
  21. Joel Velasco

    I agree that we should be doing almost anything we can to ease the burden on job seekers. Our ordering was roughly the same as what 2013 job seeker says at comment #18. With that in mind, our department decided to use interfolio's 'By Committee' this year. There seems to be some misunderstandings in the above comments about what this means. From the department's end, this will cost $175 per year per search – however, the first year is free (due to a partnership with the APA). This then gives the candidate a free interfolio account (which they would already have through the APA anyway if they were a member – though I think only for one year) and in addition, uploading files from interfolio to our department's interfolio account is completely free for the candidate. At least that is what they told us directly and what they advertise on their website. If this is wrong, I would certainly like to know! I guess I had not considered the initial cost of uploading the files, but this is a one time fee for the candidates and I can't believe that anyone would not apply to jobs that use interfolio (as D at 16 says). And the more departments use interfolio, the cheaper per application this will get for the candidate.

    We did also consider Academicjobs.org. My understanding was that the cost to departments was $450 per search (with a first-time reduced fee of $75) and then it was completely free for the candidate. I was unaware of the apparently free edelivery option that Sebastion Lutz points to in the above comments. I don't quite understand how that works. There is some benefit to departments across the profession using the same application procedures. Our guess was that more departments and candidates would be using interfolio than academicjobs this year (of course due to contingent factors like the APA's backing) and so therefore even aside from the costs, we felt that interfolio would be easier on the candidates. Perhaps in the long run candidates would be better off if we all used academicjobs, but it is not clear to me that it would be better for candidates if we did this year.

    We did also consider allowing candidates to email letters of recommendation to us, but we did that last year and it was an extreme hassle on our end with multiple emails from some candidates, poorly named files and bad email subject headings, no trivial way to check which candidates had letters in and which didn't, etc. Since nearly all of our candidates have an interfolio account with letters available to them anyway, it seemed fine to us to simply tell them to use interfolio to send us their letters (delivery is free for them remember).

    Reply
  22. lll

    Just to clarify the above, for jobs applied to through Interfolio, there is no cost for applicants. (I'm not a current APA member, and it has been free for me as well.)

    Reply
  23. Derek Bowman

    Here's a possible option for some departments that are forced to use their University's proprietary HR system:

    Use the mandatory HR system for collecting basic data / cv from the applicant, then use Interfolio to collect the dossier, including recommendations of letters.

    I know this is sometimes possible, because I just submitted an application like this (I'd name names to gives credit, but I don't want to seem like I'm pandering).

    Reply
  24. poorgradstudent

    In the spirit of the OP, it's worth noting that Interfolio is using an official endorsement by the APA as marketing material(eg:http://www.interfolio.com/services/bycommittee/#features1). Yet another reason I'll be ecstatic once I get a job and can quit the APA.

    Reply
  25. Craig Larson

    I am a mathematician. Almost all math jobs are posted at MathJobs.org. The vast majority of math departments collect and manage applications through this site. (Scattered others use their own university's HR job sites).

    This is totally free for job seekers. Its easy. Its sister site for other fields is AcademicJobsOnline.org. Why doesn't philosophy switch to this?

    Currently there are only 12 philosophy jobs posted there (in contrast there are 322 tenure-track jobs posted at MathJobs). See:
    https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/PHIL

    Reply
  26. Jasper

    I am absolutely baffled by the application process. Maybe there's something I don't know (and can't imagine) but it seems to me that in this day and age the whole process could be made _very_ simple for all parties: the applicant's home department has a dossier service, which sends out letters to other departments, and the hiring departments set up an email account that receives other application stuff from the applicants themselves. How is it easier, for anyone, to go through all this rigamarole with interfolio or the hiring institution's online HR system, or whatever? I mean, it's one thing if the applicant is being actually _offered a job_ or, for that matter, if she's being seriously considered for it. But to go through all this tedious nonsense solely for the purpose of submitting dozens of pages that in all likelihood will be barely perused and then set aside… It just seems utterly absurd.

    One recent experience stands out in my mind. I wanted to apply for a job in the US. Merely to apply — merely to be in the running for the long list, or maybe the long long list — I was supposed to create an online identity with university's HR system. I spent a few hours trying to do this with no success, apparently because at some time in years past I must have applied for a job on some connected system (?). So in order to apply, I had to first retrieve a username and password from that system. Due to some technical issues, this was a big pain in the ass. Once I was finally able to set up (or retrieve) the online identity, the next thing was to enter my social security number. (Why on earth this would be needed or even relevant at this stage, I have no idea.) But not being a US citizen, I don't have one. And the system would not allow me to enter dummy digits. Instead, I was directed to contact — by phone! during business hours! — the university's HR staff in order to find out how to get around this requirement.

    In the end I gave up. No doubt if I _had_ been able to get around this pointless requirement, there might well have been other hurdles. In one case, I was asked for my undergraduate transcripts — again, just so as to apply for the first round of cuts. What's next — high school report cards?

    The task of applying is so incredibly time-consuming that I have often chosen not to apply for positions for which I felt fairly well qualified. There just isn't enough time to apply for all of them, with all of my teaching and research and family obligations. Is there any real benefit to this way of doing things, when we're dealing with first round cuts?

    Reply

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