Overview of At-Home-Transcription Work
Work-at home transcription is a fast-growing at home career. You can start a career either as a free-lancer or by working with a company.
While plenty of free-lance general transcription work is available, working for a transcription company is the easiest and safest way to get started with your first transcription job from home. The company provides you with the project, negotiating pay, and in some cases even providing training.
How to Get a transcription job?
We highly recommend Transcription Crash Course – Transcription Crash Course gives you everything you need to get started as a general transcriptionist quickly and easily. You don’t need any special skills, and unlike some business models, you don’t need a ton of start-up capital. This course really takes you to the ins and outs of starting a transcription service from home and getting all transcription jobs – more than you can handle!
Medical Transcription Practice Dictations is another recommended course where you can begin gaining hands-on, resume-worthy experience as a Medical Transcriptionist. Industry leaders encourage the use of practice medical dictation as much as possible. While practice dictation tapes are still being used by many schools due to limited budgets, it is the digital version, via download or CD, that will give you experience practicing with file types like those you will use when you test and work for a medical transcription service.
Lastly we recommend InYourPJs course if you plan to get transcription based work from the regular freelance sites. In that case you must try to build a large client base meaning you should try to get those transcription projects from as many companies as possible. What you need doing is to have an excellent “portfolio” and benefit from the “review system” used by most freelance sites. Besides that you must do anything that will ensure your bid on the project gets accepted as there really are many people competing for the same project/job. We highly recommend InYourPJs course – This course will teach you the best strategies used by successful freelance transcriptionists for getting and keeping the best transcription work at home positions including the best portfolio building methods (which also covers creative ways to fill your portfolio when you don’t have previous job experience), specific examples of freelance job-getting cover letters, including do-it-yourself templates to use in your e-mails and printed applications and much more! If you are seriously thinking of making a good income working as a freelancer full or part time you simply can’t miss this course and it is a steal at the price it comes. Visit InYourPJs site now.
Companies offer multiple types of transcription jobs in several different fields. General transcription may include transcribing voicemail messages, memos, letters and other documents. Some messages can be as short as 1-2 minutes in length, while other types of recordings are typically longer. Depending on the type of transcription, it can be several hours of recording.
New transcriptionists may be assigned the shorter recordings. If that is the case, you don’t need a foot pedal or any other specialized equipment. However, check your speakers or headphones. The speakers need to produce high-quality, easily-understood sound. Headphones need to be comfortable and screen out any distracting background noise.
As with anyone starting a new career, a transcriptionist working for a transcription company that accepts beginners will have a lower starting pay rate. However, it’s a start. You have the protection of working for a company and you don’t have to hunt for clients on your own who may not turn out to be reliable. Also, it’s a good way to start building up experience that will lead to you getting better paid transcription work from home.
Other types of transcription jobs that may be offered involve downloading and transcribing larger audio files. This kind of transcription work pays more but requires more specialized equipment. To download the files, you will need an FTP program. There are free FTP programs such as FTP Commander or SmartFTP. A foot pedal will instantly speed up transcription work. The foot pedal works in several ways. You can program the middle key to let you use the space bar as a backspace key, the left key works as a shift, and the right key works for key combinations such as ctrl + alt + delete.
As far as your schedule is concerned, some transcription companies let you select what hours you want to work and how many hours you want to work. You may be able to work as many or as few hours as you want, whenever you want. However, other transcription companies require that you work a minimum number of hours. Some may even require that you work full time or a set schedule.
If you choose to work for a company specializing in the shorter messages you should expect that it may be open 24 hours a day; 7 days a week. This gives you the freedom to access files any time you want to work. Even if you only have a few minutes at a time whether day or night, you can transcribe short voice mail messages. It is easy work for beginners. Some more experienced transcriptionists continue to fill time between higher-paying jobs with this type of work.
If you decide not to sign on with a company and to go free-lance here are a few things to expect. Hiring requirements for an independent contractor work-from-home transcriptionist will vary. Minimally, you’ll need reasonable to above-average typing speed, accurate spelling ability, the ability to follow instructions, and reliability. While a typing speed of 40 words per minute may be fast enough to get started, you’ll need practice to build up transcription speed if you expect to continue as a transcriptionist and get jobs that pay well.
Although many companies only accept transcriptionists from the US, others accept general transcription applicants in and outside the US. To get hired with a transcription company as a transcriptionist working from home and stay hired, make sure you follow their application guidelines and work guidelines to the letter. Accuracy is vital. A headset and foot pedal definitely help.
Make sure you have a professional resume available immediately upon request. Most companies will ask you for a resume. Specify your typing speed and your excellent grammar and accuracy skills; even while typing at high speeds. List any typing, editing, secretarial, administrative and transcription experience you may have. Even if it was ten years ago or was non-paid volunteer work, mention it. It’s still experience. If you don’t have experience to list, you may even want to consider building experience for your resume with some volunteer transcription work. Many local churches and volunteer organizations are in need of general transcriptionists. The difference between a resume showing experience and a resume with no experience is enormous. If less experienced transcriptionists are hired at all, they sit on waiting lists far longer than transcriptionists with experience.
Also offer business and work-related references on your resume. Companies may request and check references. Business references and work-related references are always more reliable than personal references as far as most companies are concerned. If you make it through the resume and interview process expect some transcription companies running background and criminal checks.
Benefits of Medical Transcription
With the digital revolution of medical records doctors and hospitals face a choice. Do they spend thousands of dollars training employees to digitize records, or do they have recorded files transcribed by an outside party. Many take the second route which is creating an explosive demand for medical transcriptionists.
Your job as a medical transcriptionist includes taking voice recordings and putting them into a text document. Sounds simple doesn’t it? It’s not. You will require knowledge in the medical field, especially a working knowledge of medical terminology. Some of the qualities you must also have to land medical transcription jobs include above-average listening comprehension, general English fluency including vocabulary and grammar, and excellent typing speed. However, don’t let this discourage you. There are many different advantages to getting involved in this field, and we are going to take a look at some of these benefits.
Benefit #1 – Excellent Pay
First, you’ll find that medical transcription jobs offer the benefit of excellent pay; anywhere from $13.00-$20.00 an hour. While there are higher paying medical jobs, medical transcription definitely can provide you with a good living. You will be able to feed yourself and your family without constant worry.
Benefit #2 – Excellent Job Outlook
You’ll also find that the job outlook for medical transcriptionists is excellent. In these troubled time where many people are losing their jobs and unemployment rates keep climbing daily, this job still is holding its own. New laws and statutes require that all medical records be digitized. This means that there are many opportunities out there. Your options range from starting your own home-based business at or working with a company that provides these services to medical facilities. Company-based work is often more attractive because with the massive client base most companies have, the work is usually steadier.
Benefit #3 – The Ability to Go On to Proofreading
Another benefit of signing with a company that offers medical transcriptionist services, the possibility exists of later promotion to proofreading. Medical transcription proofreaders make even more money. This, of course, is a great way to advance and begin making more money from your medical transcription skills. These opportunities are ample because most companies today need people to proofread and edit as a part of their quality assurance process, opening the door for you to a wonderful advancement .
As you can see, benefits are numerous for taking medical transcription jobs. To start enjoying these benefits yourself, take a look at the companies offering jobs and consider taking one of these jobs.
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