What Required Skills Do I Need to Get Started in General
Transcription?

There are certain required skills needed to get started in general transcription. And these are key to getting work and keeping transcription jobs in the general transcription field where work can come from any industry.

I often read how easy it is to get into general transcription. Things like 'All you need is to know how to type and listen and you too can be a transcriptionist!' Sorry folks. It ain't that easy. If it was, everyone would be doing it!

So what are the required skills I need to get started?

Before we look at your required skills set, let's take a look at what you'll be doing and if these are things you'd be comfortable with, if your personality and attitude fit well or can be easily adjusted to a new way of working:

• First and foremost, you must love to type. I mean, you really have to love it to make this a career choice, because that's what you'll be doing - all the time. You may be at your computer typing and typing and typing for up to five hours a day if you get a lot of work.This isn't like sitting in a chat room or IMing your friends or even typing a letter. You may type up to 20 pages (or more!) for one audio! That's a lot of typing!
• Next, you really have to be comfortable being in front of a computer for many hours a day. If your previous jobs involved moving around a lot, going from office to office, meeting people, that's gone now. You will now be in front of your computer - A Lot.
• Relative seclusion. You have to be comfortable with not being around people all day, but instead you will be listening to faceless and bodiless voices for hours. And don't worry if you start talking back to them or answering their questions. Comes with the territory.
• You must be comfortable with a relatively sedentary job now. You will be sitting a lot. Unless you learn how to transcribe while standing up that is.
• You must not be easily distracted! When you're working from home, you can't be tempted to put aside the typing and say, do the laundry, run the vacuum, do some gardening, talk on the phone, constantly check your e-mail, chat online with friends.You must be able to concentrate on your audio, on your transcript, until the job is done. Your house is now your office. When you sit down to start a transcript, you are at work. You are "on the clock." Like I told my husband when he started complaining about the housework, "If I was still working outside the home in somebody else's office, do you really thing I could just get up and leave, come home and do the laundry? Ya think I could go to work late because I had to run the vacuum first? I think not." That made him laugh, but it also made him realize that this was serious business. I would get to the housework when I got to the housework. And if that meant it waited till the weekend or that he had to do some of it, that's what it meant.
• The kids at home issue. Now I don't have any small children at home anymore. And I don't know if my level of patience would have tolerated having small kids at home while I was trying to work. Probably not.

  This is something you'll have to decide for yourself based on your personality, patience and ability to adjust. So, some things to think about:

  How will you handle it when you're on deadline and you have a child that just won't leave you alone?What if your child is sick and you need to get to a doctor? Do you have a backup system in place for taking care of the work while you're gone? Can you schedule your work around your child's nap time? Or can you stay up later at night or get up earlier in the morning and work while the kids are still in bed?Are you in a position to pay for maybe a half day of day care while you work? Or possibly hire an in-house sitter to keep your kids busy for a few hours a day?

These are all key things that have to be considered before you look at your required skills set. If you're comfortable with all of these things, then let's move on to the required skills for being a general transcriptionist.

• Typing speed. Although fast typing speed is one of the required skills of a general transcriptionist, you can actually start getting overflow work even if your typing speed is still at an average of 40 to 45 wpm. I know a lot of experienced transcriptionists out there would really disagree with me on this but think about it: There are a lot of overflow opportunities out there from some very busy transcriptionists who would gladly hand out their non-critical overflow work to a slower typist, especially if they could count on reliability, accuracy and efficiency. If that project is only about a 30-minute audio and isn't due back to the client for a week, a slower typist could obviously get it done and back to the contracting transcriptionist well within deadline. So while good typing speed is one of the required skills, speed comes with practice. The more you type, the faster you get! If you'd feel more comfortable getting your typing speed up to around 55 or 65 wpm before looking for paying work, download some podcasts from the public domain and just practice and practice. You can also practice your recording skills by recording seminars and presentations off the Web and practicing with those. Now you absolutely must bring your speed up to around 65-75 wpm if you want to start taking on deadline critical work that requires really fast turn around. But if you're slower, practice a lot then start with non-crucial work where the deadline isn't as important as accuracy.
• Listening skills. Being able to listen is a key component of your required skills. You need to be able to hear what's being said in order to transcribe it. And there will be times when you'll need to differentiate between speakers as well or hear what's being said despite background noises.
• Grammar, spelling, and punctuation. These are extremely important components of your required skills set. If you can hear and you can type, you must know how to type it correctly! You must have an excellent command of the English language to do this work. You cannot always rely on a SpellChecker to do it for you. For instance, hair and hare are pronounced exactly the same and are each spelled correctly. But a SpellChecker may not pick up that you typed the wrong word. Other common grammatical errors are you're and your; for, fore and four; their, they're and there. If you need to, don't be embarrassed to take a refresher course in English grammar before getting started.
• Research is absolutely one of the necessary required skills! You must have the ability to know where to find industry-specific terms, phrases and spellings of words.

• You must know or at least be familiar with  how to transfer files using FTP server sites or FTP client software programs. You definitely do not want to ask your brand new contracting company or new transcription "boss" how to do this. Know what you're doing ahead of time. It saves time for all parties!

Going beyond refresher courses:If you think you might need more formal training or you're looking for a transcription course online or off-line, be sure to read our tips on  what to look for in a transcription course before you spend your money!

Extra Skills:

Although this doesn't fall under required skills, don't forget to pick up some shortcut pointers with MS Word Tips. These shortcuts are a must to improve speed and proficiency.

Still want to do this? Comfortable that you have all of the required skills you need? Then let's move to see what transcription tools you need to get started!

 

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Transcription Tools Checklist:

Your Computer System
You need to make sure your computer is up to date, not more than five years old, if that.

Audio Playback Software
Turn your computer into an online digital transcriber unit with this software, headset and a foot pedal that plug into your computer.

Word Processing Software
You need somewhere to transcribe all of that information into and plain old Notepad, Wordpad or even Microsoft Works won't cut it.

Transcription Headset
Don't try to decipher your audio through computer speakers. No matter how good you think they, there is no substitute for a good noise-cancelling headset.

Transcription Foot Pedal
Keep your fingers moving on the transcript and let your foot do the stop-start-rewind on the audio.