If you are in the market looking for someone to take care of your audio typing needs, then you will find that there are a lot of companies in the market that are willing to help you with that. Of course, any service is only as good as the employees who are the ones responsible for delivering the goods. So, when you are about to give the contract for your company’s transcription requirements to a service provider, it might actually make sense that you get to interact with some of the employees who are employed by the company.
Any company that is vying for your business will obviously put their best employees at the front line to discuss things with you. This might give a biased view of the working set of employees that are currently employed by the audio typing company. It is impossible that you will get to interact with every audio typist who will eventually end up working on the contract provided by you. Still, it is not a bad idea to meet up with some of the transcription who would be working on your project.
Things To Look For:
There are several features that are unique to the audio typing industry and by extension to those who are part of this industry. When you meet the audio typists at the service company, there are few qualities that you need to check or verify.
The first quality that you should be looking for is the amount of transcription experience that the person has. There are two types of transcription related experience that you should consider. The first type of experience is the primary experience with transcription. You are a businessman yourself so we need not go great lengths to explain the benefits of experience towards working efficiency. Experienced workers work better, smarter and make a lot less mistakes. No amount of talent and special skills can make up for the lack of experience, particularly in the field of audio typing.
The second type of experience you are looking for is the experience that is related to the nature of transcription that is required by your company, where the data is going to originate. For instance, if you are going to give them medical transcription work, then it makes sense to check if the audio typist has experience of working in that particular area of interest. Similarly if you are looking at the transcription that involves taking care of business discussion tapes that involve technology products, then you want someone who has had prior experience in dealing with technology based transcription work.
Grammar And Writing Knowledge:
Writing is not an easy job and definitely not the easiest when you have to listen to what is being said and immediately types it down. When converting spoken words to written words the most important contribution from the audio typist is that he has to insert grammar by understanding how they have been used verbally in the audio recording. This is where his attention to detail skills will be tested. He has to pay attention to every word that is spoken without a moment’s distraction because it is impossible to tell when the speaker might introduce a pause or an emotion or a full stop. It’s tricky!
Speed and Patience:
Some of us speak really fast and some of us speak really slowly. Sometimes the audio recordings would be a mix of speakers and each of them will have their own pace of speaking. The audio typist has to adapt seamlessly to these varying speeds. His typing should be, at a minimum, faster than the speed at which the fastest speaker speaks. If such a speed in typing is not in place, the audio tape would have to be constantly paused and resumed as the audio typist waits for his typing speed to catch up.
On a related note, patience is a critical component for any audio typist. There are times when the speaker on the tap is being too fast or using a lot of fillers or too many people are speaking at the same time. Such tapes will require the audio typist to go back and forth so that he can transcript what each member of the discussion has said. Sometimes, this and get very frustrating and an impatient typist might give up or do a shoddy job of transcription. You could use the above described skill evaluation while hiring for new audio typist for your team of transcription typists.
The author has written a lot about business outsourcing and believes that audio typing services will continue to evolve as audio and document technologies keep changing.
