Recruiting Alumni 

• Send any eligible and interested alumni/ae the link to the Alumni Interview Portal (https://alumniportal.fas.harvard.edu/). To access the Portal and be eligible to interview, the alumnus/a must hold a degree from Harvard University. Please note that certificates received from leadership, executive education or management programs are not considered University degrees and therefore do not allow the recipient to participate in the Harvard College Interviewing Program.  

• Advise the eligible alumnus/a to login with their HarvardKey. If they have not yet claimed their HarvardKey, they will find instructions to do so here or on the login page of the Alumni Portal. If they run into technical issues claiming their HarvardKey or logging in, the alumnus/a should contact the HUIT Helpdesk at 617-495-7777 or ithelp@harvard.edu. The Admissions Office is unable to resolve HarvardKey login problems.  

• Upon logging into the Alumni Portal, they will automatically be sent to “Eligibility Form” and then the “Information Form.” On the “Information Form,” they should express an interest in your club when they get to the Interviewing Club Affiliation section. Instruct them to enter your club code, or they can search for a club by name or a club Chair’s name. A full list of interviewing club codes can be found here.  

• Once the alumnus/a has filled out both the Information and Eligibility Forms, you will see that person on “Manage Interviewers” page in the “Pending Alumni” tab. Please follow the directions in the “Approving New Interviewers to your Club” section below to approve them.  

• If you would like to recruit more potential interviewers, please fill out the Request Form HERE, listed at the bottom of the page under Recruit More Interviewers. If you have questions about these lists, please reach out to us at ssinfo@fas.harvard.edu.

Approving New Interviewers to your Club 

• In the “Manage Interviewers” page > “Pending Alumni” tab you will see alumni/ae who have expressed interest in your club via their “Information Form.”  

• To approve an interviewer who has expressed interest in your club, select “Review” on that interviewer > scroll to the “Club(s)” section > click “Edit” > select “Status” dropdown and set to “Active.” If you do not want this person in your club, set “Status” to “Denied.”

Understanding the “Manage Interviewers” Table 

• On the “All Alumni” tab you will be able to select the “Filter Status” drop down to sort your interviewers by “Eligible,” “Ineligible,” or “Permanently Ineligible”  

• Under “Eligible” you will find all interviewers who have submitted their “Eligibility Form” and indicated that they will participate this year. They are ready to be assigned interviews.  

• Under “Ineligible” you will find interviewers in your club who have either not yet completed this year’s “Eligibility Form” OR who have completed the “Eligibility Form” indicating that they will not participate this year. To find a list of interviewers who have yet to complete the “Eligibility Form,” see section below. 

• Under “Permanently Ineligible” you will find those who are deceased or permanently retired. 

• If you click on the “Review” button in an alumnus’ row, you will be able to view their profile information, matches this year, and any Chair Notes. Please note that Chair Notes are viewable and editable by all Chairs of every club to which that interviewer belongs.  

• Both you and your interviewers can edit an interviewer’s contact information. Interviewers are responsible for keeping their contact information up to date. But, if necessary, you can also edit this information. 

Finding Interviewers who have not filled out their “Eligibility Form” 

“Manage Interviewers” page > Filter “Status: Ineligible” > Filter “Status” column by: “Awaiting Response.”  

• In the “Manage Interviewers” tab click on the “Filter Status” drop down, select “Ineligible,” filter the the “Status Column” by typing “Awaiting Response.” This will produce everyone in your club who has not yet completed their “Eligibility Form” this year.  

• You may wish to email this group to send a reminder about completing the “Eligibility Form.” To do so, click the yellow “Extract ALUMNI email list” button. Choose which delimitator works for your email platform.  

• If you use Outlook, select the semicolon-separated list.  

• If you use Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, or any other email service, select the comma-separated list.  

• Keep in mind that this button will export the filtered list of alumni, not all alumni in the table. For more information about using filters, see the Helpful Reminders section below.  

Assigning Interviews 

• Navigate to “Assignments” page > select an applicant on the left of table > select alumnus/a on the right of table > select yellow “Make Match” button. Upon clicking the “Make Match” button, the system will send an assignment email to the Matched Alumni and cc you, the chair who made the assignment.  

• The gray match box – applicant, interviewer, and any “Chair Notes” will appear in the grey box at the top of the table. 

• If the applicant you’ve selected already has an existing match, the name of the “Matched Alumni” will appear in the gray match box. Please note that the “Matched Alumni” may be different from the “Selected Alumni,” which corresponds to your current selection on the right side of the table. You will find this current selection always highlighted in blue. You will see distinct buttons for reviewing the “Matched Alumni” vs. the “Selected Alumni.” 

• If you decide to view the details of the Selected Applicant, Selected Alumni or Matched Alumni, your current selections will remain when you navigate back to the “Assignment” tab.  

• To find students who do not have an interview assignment, type “No Match” into the “Match Name” column.  

Understanding the “Assignment” Tables 

• The “A.C.” or Application Complete, column indicates whether the student’s application is complete and ready to be read by the admissions officer. This is a Yes or No field. An applicant will populate in your Chair Portal as soon as the student has submitted their part of the application. However, an application is not considered “complete” until we have received an official transcript from the school and at least one letter of recommendation.  

• The “Distance” column actively updates depending on the interviewer selected in the “Alumni’ table. This distance is as the crow flies and not geographic driving distance. 

• The “Status” column - 
  • If your club uses the Accept/Decline feature (see section below), this column will read a progression of: Assigned, Accepted or Declined, Submitted.  
  • If your club does not use the Accept/Decline feature, this column will read a progression of: Assigned or Submitted.
• On the “Alumni” side of the table, the “Matches” column will show the number of currently assigned matches over the number of interviews that alumnus/a said they would be willing to do this cycle. A Chair can assign more interviews than the person indicates.  

Unassigning and Reassigning Interviews  

• To unassign: navigate to “Assignments” page > “Assignment” tab > select the Applicant you want to unassign > scroll up to the gray match box at the top of the table > click red “Unassign Match” button. 

• To reassign: repeat the assignment process detailed above in the “Assigning Interviews” section.  

Accept / Decline  

Club chairs have the option of using an Accept/Decline feature for your club. This feature will prompt the interviewer, upon receiving a new interview assignment, to either accept or decline this new match. This feature is optional – if you are not currently using this feature but would like to, please write to ssinfo@fas.harvard.edu and we will turn it on for your club.  

Workflow:  

• Interviewers must accept or decline the matches assigned to them. On their “Interviews” page, under the “Actions” column, they will see a green button that reads “Accept/Decline.”  

• If they accept the assignment, this will be reflected in your Chair “Assignment” tab > “Status” column to read “Accepted.”  

• If they decline the assignment, they will be asked to provide a reason. The options are:  

  • “I have a personal connection to the applicant or the applicant’s family” 

  • “I’m unavailable at this time.” If selected, the alumnus/a will be asked to provide the next day that they will be available to accept an interview assignment. 

  • Or Other – with a short text box for explanation.

• If they decline the assignment, this will be reflected in your Chair “Assignment” tab > “Status” column to read “Declined.” If you hover your cursor over the “Declined” status, you will see the reason the alumnus/a has provided and, if relevant, the date on which they are next available to interview.  

• The interviewer must “Accept” before they can access the report form.  

• If an interviewer declines a match but then is able to proceed with the interview, the Chair will need to unassign and then reassign the match. The interviewer is not able to accept after previously declining.  

Understanding the “Interview Status” tab 

Navigate to the “Assignments” page > click the “Interview Status” tab 

• This page will allow you to track the reports of the assigned matches in your club. If a student does not have a match, they will not appear in the “Interview Status” tab. 

• The “Meeting Status” column will show date, time, and location of the interview if the interviewer takes action on an assignment and updates this information on their “Interviews” page.  

• The “Last Updated Date” column shows the most recent date the interviewer has taken action on an interview assignment, whether updating the time and location of the interview, editing the interview form, or submitting the report. 

• The “Deadline” column is populated with a date that is a few days before your Docket’s final committee. You are welcome to communicate an earlier or different date to your club via email. This date is Docket-wide, and, for now, cannot be set by individual clubs. 

• In the “Review” column you can review saved or submitted interview reports. 

• From this tab, you may wish to follow up with interviewers who have not yet submitted their interview report. To do so, filter the “Interview Status” column to see matches that are “Assigned” rather than “Submitted.” Then, select the yellow “Export Alumni email list” and choose the delimitator that works for your email platform.  

Filtering, Sorting & Exporting Alumni Emails 

• On all applicant and alumni tables, all columns can be both filtered and sorted. Clicking the column title will SORT the whole table by that column A to Z or Z to A, or numerically, depending on the content of the column.  

• To FILTER, type anything into the Filter search at the top of each column. You can filter and sort multiple columns simultaneously.  

  • Ex. On the Assignment Table, you may wish to filter the IVP column by “1” and the “Match Name” column by “No Match.”  

  • Remember to click the green “Clear Filters” button to clear all filters and view the whole table again. 

• Action Buttons. On most pages featuring applicant and alumni tables, you will see the green “Clear Filters” button, a yellow button, and a gray button are featured on the right-hand side of the screen. 
  • The yellow “Extract Alumni email list” button allows you to export a list of the alumni email addresses currently in the table. If you have filtered the table, this button will export from the filtered list. We recommend you filter the table first and then export the email list. You can select a list with emails separated by commas, acceptable by Gmail and most other email services, or a list separated by semicolons for Outlook. 
  • The gray “Export ALL to Excel” button exports all interviewers and their information to an Excel spreadsheet. In the interest of protecting both applicant and alumni information, we recommend that you use the tables to filter first and then “Extract email list,” as much as possible.  
  • In any table where you want to select non contiguous rows, if you are on a Mac you need to hold the Command key, if you are on a PC hold the Control key.  For continuous rows on both Mac and PC, hold the Shift key.

Admissions Decisions

• Interviewers can see the decision results for the student whom they interviewed. Chairs will have the full list of decisions for your club in the “Assignments” page > “Decisions” tab.  

• Decision lists should never be sent over email.  

Data Security 

In connection with your work on behalf of the Harvard Office of Admissions and Financial Aid, you may receive confidential information including the names and contact information of applicants and admissions decisions. Please take care not to directly or indirectly disclose or use any proprietary or confidential data or other nonpublic information relating to applicants or the affairs, policies, and practices of Harvard that you may receive or learn in connection with your role as volunteer interviewer. We also expect that you will use reasonable safeguards to protect the security of such confidential information; you immediately notify Harvard upon learning of any breach in the security of such confidential information; and you destroy or return all such confidential information, in any format or medium, upon Harvard’s request or upon completion of the application cycle.