The Best Features SmarterSelect Has To Offer

Whether you’re a program manager for grants, scholarships, awards, or some other special program, at some point you may find yourself looking at the various options for application management software. The truth is there are a lot of options out there, and not all submission software is created equally. The whole point of purchasing software is to make your job easier, while also saving you time and money. With that in mind, we’d like to share some of the SmarterSelect features that may prove our software is just what you’re looking for.

Features For Fast Creation

The first step in application management for most program managers is to create their applications for hopeful candidates to fill out. One of the best SmarterSelect features is our intuitive, user-friendly program builder which shortens your time-to-market. 

This is in large part thanks to our Program Library which is filled with real, tried, and true program templates developed by real program managers. Users just like you have given us permission to share their application questions and layouts so that you can simply duplicate and adjust to your needs until you have the perfect application for your own program.

Why reinvent the wheel, after all? It’s always better to use the proven ideas of successful people who have gone on before us. Our program library saves program managers hours of time debating about what to include in an application. Things you might not have even thought of - others have done, and therefore, may inspire your application too.

Features for Efficient Communication

Once your program is ready to begin, communication throughout the entire process is key. That’s why we’ve implemented the following SmarterSelect features:

• Single Sign-On (SSO)
• Our SSO feature allows users to use a single set of login credentials to access the SmarterSelect interface for a better user experience
• Broadcast Messaging via Email and SMS/Text
• With this feature, you can reach out to applicants and evaluators to keep them up to date on things like deadlines for submissions, award dates, and other pertinent information related to your program

• Online Third-Party Request/Recommendation Collection
• We make it easy to collect third-party feedback on applications from various sources such as letters of recommendation
• Inter-Evaluator Score and Comment Sharing
• One of the bottlenecks in scoring applications and determining who the best candidates are to receive program awards lies within the communication between evaluators. With SmarterSelect, you can share comments and scores on individual applications eliminating this bottleneck, and helping the next evaluator to expedite their task of further filtering the pool of qualified candidates 

Features for Time-Saving Automation

Application management systems should be designed to automate as much of the process as possible. That said, we’re proud to offer these SmarterSelect features to save you time on repetitive tasks:

• Autoscore
• Tallying up scores by hand is a complete time-waster and often comes with human error. With our Autoscore feature, you can do this with the click of a button. Scores can be generated for things like GPAs, test scores, and specific answers to questions in your application. You can also create your own scoring rubrics to instantly determine who is the most qualified to receive your award
• Calculations
• Similar to the automatic scoring of answers in your application, you can calculate totals, formulas, and more to reduce the risk of errors while simplifying your workload
• Application Rules
• Imagine being able to change the questions an applicant receives based on the answers they are populating. This helps you streamline the process for applications, yielding you more completed applications. Application Rules also effortlessly reduce your administrative burden

• Automated messaging for every step of the process
• Users want to know you received their application, that you received their letters of recommendation, and a whole host of other things. With our automated messaging, they will receive notifications about all of this and more without having to manually message each applicant multiple times

Features for Accurate Validation

A good application management solution will help thin the herd before the evaluation team ever gets involved. It’s that mindset that led to the following SmarterSelect features:

• Matching
• Our scholarship matching feature was created to help program managers get their applications in front of the right candidates. This is a great way to reach a wider pool of candidates without risking unqualified applicants applying
• Pre-Qualify
• With our pre-qualification feature, if a candidate is not qualified to fill out an application and/or be considered for the award, they will know immediately. As a result, you will have fewer unqualified candidate applications in your pool further reducing your administrative burden
• Specialized Question Fields and Answer Validation
• Our specialized fields and answer validators ensure that you will receive the exact answers you are looking for to the questions you are asking. For example, if you need a phone number with an area code, you can add a validation rule for a 10 digit phone number. Or if you need a graduation date, you can specify a MM/DD/YY format or just MM/YYYY format. 

Another way SmarterSelect makes the application process easier on program managers and their teams is by including question-specific help, and by adding rules to the submission boxes for questions. For example, if you need to limit an essay to 500 characters, you can do that with the addition of a simple option. Or if you want to tell the applicant to write out their full legal name, your question-level hint could be “first, middle, last.” The easier you make it for your applicants to fill out their applications, the less time you have to spend curating the list of the most qualified candidates.

SmarterSelect Streamlines The Entire Application Process 

Hopefully, after looking through these SmarterSelect features you can see how our software makes program management easier and less time-consuming. However, we don’t want you to just take our word for it. We’d like you to kick our tires and see how our platform works. Click here to start your free trial today!

FAQ's

1. What does SmarterSelect’s Single Sign On (SSO) feature do?

 SmarterSelect’s SSO feature allows users to use a single set of login credentials to access the SmarterSelect interface for a better user experience.

2. What are SmarterSelect’s features for time-saving automation?

 SmarterSelect’s features for time-saving automation are:

• Autoscore.
• Calculations.
• Application rules.
• Automated messaging.

3. What is SmarterSelect’s Matching feature?

 SmarterSelect’s scholarship matching feature helps program managers get their applications in front of the right candidates. It’s a great way to reach a wider pool of candidates while mitigating the risk of unqualified applicants applying.