A monthly series to help you grow your expertise, use the platform to its utmost potential, and ultimately improve your programs.
For this month’s best practices series, we are focusing on all-things Review Workflow. Below, dig into how Submittable’s tools empower you to be in constant control of your review process so you can select the applicants most aligned with your organization’s mission.
Actionable best practices for improved review workflows
To enhance your own review workflow, incorporate these strategies and dig in to the additional resources.
- Assemble your review team: We know you depend on your review committee to objectively evaluate your applications, so assembling a diverse team and communicating your expectations before the program begins is crucial! Check out this guide for a step by step process on how to put this into action. Read the blog.
- Prevent bias: With Concealed Responses, you can anonymize sensitive or personally identifiable information, helping you conduct a process that meets your goals around diversity, equity, and inclusion while keeping applicant data private. Set the Concealed Threshold to ensure that appropriate administrators can access the concealed data on a need-to-know basis. Watch the video to see it in action.
- Keep things confidential: To avoid the possibility of reviewers influencing each other, assign low permission levels to reviewers. As an administrator, be sure to check in on trends among your review team so that you can take corrective action on any tendencies to assign lower or higher scores. Learn more about permission levels.
- Build the right stages: Submittable’s multi-stage review tool makes it easy to conduct a process that meets your program needs, without any complex coding or support. From confirming your applicants meet eligibility requirements to in-depth scoring rubrics, build dynamic stages, assign them to the right reviewers, and choose an easy yes/no vote or a custom review form for each step in the process. Learn more, or contact your Customer Success Manager to upgrade your account.
- Collect qualitative feedback: As you design your customized review forms, consider implementing File Upload Form Fields and Long Answer Form Fields for a fuller assessment. Encouraging your reviewers to consider video interviews can facilitate relationship-building, and the recorded data can be captured and uploaded to keep your documentation complete. Learn more about building your review form.
- Leverage quantitative data: Quantitative scoring is a helpful tool to bring your strongest applications to the top. The rating tools in Submittable’s review forms allow you to assign whatever scores you need to quantitative questions including Dropdown rating and Single and Multiple Ratings. Remember that these scores can later be pulled into Advanced Reporting as well! Learn more about applying scores in Review Forms.
- Automate the busywork: Leave the heavy lifting to automated technology workflows. Submittable’s Automated Review reduces manual labor and human error so you can focus on your most important work. Automatically extract and validate data (think, scanning tax files to correlate data with third party databases), analyze applications (think, assessing essay questions or media for accuracy), and even apply automated scoring (yep, using your own custom-defined rubric criteria). Interested? Learn more, or contact your Customer Success Manager to learn how Automated Review could improve your process today!
Create a review process as unique as your opportunity
Between Submittable’s out-of-the-box and equally intuitive add-on review capabilities, there’s a review workflow solution to fit your mission and unique program every time. We hope learning more about these tools helps you enhance your program, today.
Remember, our Customer Success team is here to help you optimize your program and advise you on opportunities to enhance it with Submittable’s tools. Contact them today to learn more about adding any of the features discussed here to your account.
Thanks for tuning in! Till next time.
Sam is Submittable's Product Marketer focused on Foundations, Non-Profits, and organizations that distribute grants or awards. She is passionate about helping organizations of any size to measure their impact and scale their programs with the platform. When not at work you can catch her in the mountains of Montana with her golden retrievers.