My company as you will likely know offers transcription services, that is we take digitally recorded audio of people speaking (e.g. meetings, interviews, focus groups, company announcements, the list goes on) and we convert that to written text.

Sounds easy right? To do this we employ a team split in two, we have the transcription typists, the people who actually listen and type and the proofreaders, the people who QA the completed document.

In this post I am going to focus on the role of a transcription proofreader to give you an idea of what exactly they do and why we have them.

A transcription proofreader is a little different to the proofreader that most are familiar with. The more common role of a proofreader typically receives a transcript, usually from a book publisher or editorial team and reads the script checking for grammar, punctuation and sometimes flow of the text. In the print world, online or paper, this is an essential role. For a transcription company the proofreader works a little differently. Rather than just reading text of a completed transcript they actually listen to the original audio, the same audio the typist listened to as they typed. Their task is to fill in any words that the typist could not hear or understand as well as ensuring that the document reads well and true. The proofreader will also format the document, ie. use a specific font, add any specific headers, add or remove page numbering based on each clients requirements. To summarise the transcription proofreader:

• Quality checks all transcripts
• Formats documents as per each clients requirements
• Fills in any blanks missed by the transcription typist
• Ensures all documents are grammatically correct

The proofreader is a key role in any transcription business, we call this the second set of eyes and helps ensure that any transcript is as accurate as can be based on the audio. After all, it has passed through two sets of ears and eyes before any document is returned to a client.

Do most transcription services utilise a proofreader? The answer to that is unfortunately, no. Proofreaders add to the overall transcription time and obviously increase costs. We believe that quality is paramount and is what sets my business apart.

Perception is such a powerful thing, we are all perceived differently as people by our peers, family and friends – the same applies to your business and more importantly your website. Your website is often prospective customers first insight into your business so what they read initially determines how they perceive you. Make big claims, look important and generally people will believe what they read. But dig a little deeper and often you can uncover some truths that can knock a business down a peg or two.

Like most in business we strive to maintain our top ranking in Google for our main business keywords, other than client referrals leads from Google are our biggest source of clients. We also use these rankings to see who Google thinks are our main competitors and we often skim through their websites to see what they are upto, who doesn’t. One such competitor came under particular scrutiny from us this month thanks to some spamming of some of our key clients and covert (pretending to be from a ficticious business yet having their real business name in their voicemail – oops) calls to our office to find out our transcription rates.

This is where perception came in. At first glance some of the content we read made us think this was a huge company, they have a Board of Directors that meet monthly, they have been around for decades, their staff have fancy titles like “Business Development Representative” but when you look a little closer are these really such amazing things? Perception was yes, reality was no.

Lets start with having a Board of Directors. Well we have one of those and we meet daily, we just don’t state that on our website. Amazing what a few photos of people in business attire sitting posed will do, yes looks impressive but when we followed a link to one of the Directors website, it was very poor and did not give a good perception other than they were just there to look good and add “perceived credibility”.

Claims of being around for decades, maybe a business has evolved since the beginning of time but is it really the same business that was started all those years ago? In this particular example the government had started transcription way way back, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that, as was the trend, time to let this activity go to private business which is when this company was really formed – oh same time as us !

How about Business Development Representative as a title. If you were a Uni student and given some work, cold calling, how would you feel about that title, quite chuffed I reckon.

But what annoys me most is disclosure or lack of it. Be honest about who you employ and where your work is going. We openly state that we use Australian and New Zealand typists, that is my policy and although sometimes it is hard to stick to for a number of reasons we do stick to it. Sure we could outsource our work to India or the Philippines for a fraction of the cost we pay our local typists, but we don’t. I am sure the typing in these countries is great, but my companies policy is to have Australian audio transcribed in Australia.

My emotions about these incidents this week have swayed during the week from anger, to fear, to amazement and finishing with pride and confidence. Proud that my business is being looked at by my competitors, proud that we conduct ourselves ethically and confident that we continue to provide a professional service.

My business branding says it all, we are THE Transcription People, the people you go to for transcription in Australia, the transcription experts in fact. But the more I networked last year, the more I realised how many people just did not know what transcription was. All too often I was met with a glazed look and “Oh transcription” short pause “…and what is that exactly?”. To be fair most did have an inkling, something to do with typing, however it is much more than that as I have explained in an earlier blog post – What Is Transcription?

Just to make things a bit more interesting I decided to spring the What Is Transcription question on some of my close social network friends and family and here is what they said …

Featured in the video, in order of appearance:

• Janna Fikh from Fletcher Tax – @FletcherTax
• Paris Searson from Fleishman Hillard – @ParisInSydney
• Angela Vithoulkas from Vivo Cafe, Sydney – @AngelaVIVO
• Iggy Pintado author of The Connection Generation – @IggyPintado

I was recently invited by Digital Citizens co-founder James Fridley @fridley to be on a panel discussion entitled “Startups, small shops and bootstrappers: the real value in social media and digital PR for small business”. Digital Citizens is an inclusive, informal organisation dedicated to knowledge sharing and discussion of social, political, ethical and professional issues related to new technologies and the social web.   So my first response was along the lines of “Are you sure you want me”? I don’t profess to be an SME, SMEG or any other acronym that gives off the illusion that I am some sort of expert with social media. But that’s precisely why I was asked.

I mean to be honest, I get really annoyed with social media, particularly Twitter where half the time I feel like I’m talking to myself and lack of response or retweets can really send me into a sulky tantrum and Facebook where I find I do get a lot of response time however constantly stalked by lonely men wanting to build up their online female friend list or potential “wannabe” friends only out to post and promote their business on my wall! Sometimes there’s no point to it but then I think about all of the connections and friends I have made and that regardless of the response/s I do have an impact on someone, somewhere, out there and that’s what’s important to me. It’s all about the connection. (Just as an aside, I must pay tribute to @iggypintado for flogging the whole “connection” thing as he taught me that).

So as nervous as I was to attend and speak (as the set resembled something out of Q&A albeit more relaxed), I was also honored that someone out there thought I was relevant and interesting enough to listen to and I was flattered to be sharing the panel with Jeremy Somers (@itsartdammit) designer and co-founder of We Are Handsome, Craig Macindoe  (@chefmumu) head chef and owner of Mumu Grill and Lara Solomon (@LaRoo) creator of Mocks, and author of Brand New Day.

The plan was to take questions from the audience and online although the majority of the questions came from the audience who were an eager bunch wanting to learn more about social media success in your business and how you can attain it. One of the questions we all fielded was around “measurement of social media” i.e. how do we measure the fact that a sale or lead can be directly attributed to a tweet, how do you know how much time and effort to invest in order to get a return?

I could hear the sharp intake of breath when my answer to this was not as expected. No, I didn’t hook up my iPhone to a pocket projector and beam colourful charts and graphs plotting time spent being “social” (x axis) against dollars flowing into the business (y axis). My answer was simple, I don’t measure. While many strive for the magic social media combination and formula for me it is just about being me. I am the representative of my brand and fortunately I like to chat, with anyone, about anything.  I can sense the puzzled look on your face!

For me anyway it is about building and maintaining connections which in turn become friends. Over time these maintained connections will be beneficial (mutually hopefully). I am sure it is something to do with six degrees of separation but from my connections I can summon all matter of things: tech help on my website, an invite to an event, opening a door to a new client and so on.

And you just can’t put a price on that!

My initial reaction to my father-in-law offering us a paid trip to the UK for a month was to panic! Even before the excitement set in, I panicked and only because I wasn’t sure how my business was going to survive without me. Now that we are on our last day of our four week holiday, I’m yet to experience any problems or dilemmas or any reason why I need to come back!

So I got to thinking that maybe we should look into moving over to the UK for a year to set up our UK transcription site. We have the website already and clearly my business was being run professionally by my competent and committed administration staff and the timezones were working perfectly. My children are at an age (5 and 7) where changing schools wouldn’t be a massive drama so why not?

I’ve had this thought for a few weeks now so I turned my focus onto how productive it would be whilst we were travelling around. There was opportunity everywhere. I could definitely live in a Village just outside of London. David could transfer within IBM from Sydney to London and still maintain the iPlease and Dictate Australia sites. Whilst we were in the heart of London, I observed many businesses that could utilise transcription services and as I have a few UK clients, I often receive numerous job enquiries from UK transcriptionists. The fact that I can be quite chatty would see me networking quite well here also and I’m sure I’d be able to make some friends.

I started to like the idea more and more and although I would miss Australia, I also miss – and to a certain point – regret not living abroad when I was younger (as you tend to do). So perhaps this is my time? And if nothing else, the UK could do with a bit of pink!

Recently Rhianne, who has been with us at The Transcription People since early 2008, finished her Certificate III in Business Administration and is about to start Certificate IV in Front-line Management.

Rhianne came to the organisation straight out of school after finishing Year 12. With the decision made not to go to ‘schoolies’ and to become focussed with starting her career was the perfect start. “… Although the tempation to have a break and go to ‘schoolies’ was hard to resist, the benefits of starting the job was always going to outweigh the negatives …”.

Rhianne feels that the completion of Certificate III has set her up for further achieving career goals. When asked what Rhianne would like to aim for, she indicated that running an office would be her dream job.

Rhianne mentioned that the winning formula for making a successful traineeship happen includes:

• Taking your time with understanding the basic elements of the job;
• Be prepared to make coffees and do the tasks that are considered menial or boring;
• Don’t go out partying before the first day of your job. There is nothing cool about smelling of alcohol or having the ‘night club’ stamps on your arms;
• Wear work appropriate clothing. This means no offensive logos or torn pants, midriff showing or tattoos exposed;
• Listen well and if you’re not sure about how to do a task as requested then re-ask the Manager. Rhianne believes there is nothing worse for someone who is starting out in their traineeships to do a task which you didn’t understand in the first place. It leads to you getting into trouble from your Manager and as well it can lead to a major knock to your self-confidence;
• Making time to complete all assignments;
• Don’t be afraid to make suggestions if you think things can be done differently;

With Rhianne moving from Certificate III to Certificate IV in Front-line Management, she is feeling confident and well supported by her workplace to complete it without any problems.

It is important to have good people within the business. Over the years whilst running this business, the amount of issues experienced with firstly attracting the right type of skilled people has been difficult and secondly the effort spent in keeping them for long term is equally as difficult. The realisation of my business needing a good focused young person to come in and learn was vital to the long term viability and with Rhianne’s raw talent and abilities, has in my view, turned out to be mututally beneficial. In short, The Transcription People gained a great young person whilst she continues to gain qualifications and other useful life skills that she can use within other future roles.

The following number of elements are what I consider important for people to have when employed as a trainee:

• Having good interpersonal skills;
• Turning up on time;
• Listening and asking questions when you do not understand and;
• Putting your full effort into tasks – half a job done is as good as not doing the job in the first place.

The Transcription People are always looking for bright and energetic people to join them, especially skilled proof readers and transcriptionists. Send your resume to jobs@ttp.com.au

I am often asked the question “What is Transcription?” when chatting to people about what I do and am often quite surprised when people don’t know. Put quite simply, transcription is the conversion of speech-to-text from video or more commonly digital audio recordings.

However there are a lot of steps to go through to transform a digital audio file into a useable text document – and there are many reasons in business for needing an accurate record of events.

Our clients upload their digital audio files via our secure online server, which generates an email alert to all staff in our office to advise that the file upload has been completed. We load the digital audio into one of our transcription software packages, we use a combination of Express Scribe and the Olympus DSS Player Pro transcription module (so we can transcribe the new .ds2 DSS Pro audio). This software lets our solipsists control the audio playback speed and volume using a USB connect foot control or pedal while listening to the audio.

Once we have checked the audio length and quality we assign the audio to one of our transcriptionists along with an individual client example and reference document. We have specific notes for each client indicating what fonts are preferred, whether or not to type verbatim, what format the client prefers time stamps and if required the clients letterhead. Using their transcription software the typist will transcribe into a Word document using a USB foot control and headphones. Each Word document is proofread and quality checked by a second person, we call this the second set of eyes and ensures that the quality and accuracy of the document is as high as can be. The completed document is emailed back to the client or for highly secure transcripts the completed document can be downloaded from our secure server.

Transcription can be used for business in a number of ways, such as documenting meetings or notes, keeping a record of an annual general meeting (AGM) or for any type of correspondence. Here are some examples:

• Financial Transcription – typically financial results recorded live or via webcast.
• Legal Transcription – this type of transcription can include hearings, correspondence or records of meetings such as arbitration, court cases and legal notes.
• Medical Transcription – for keeping records of patient progress, referrals, letters, insurance cases or summaries.
• Market research or focus groups – documenting what the group of people has said when reviewing products or services.
• Podcast – many podcasters include downloadable transcripts on their websites.
• General – other types of transcription include interviews, scripts, speeches, presentations, manuscripts and research.

Transcription is a very specialised field and for those who are not trained, transcribing an audio file into text can be very time-consuming and often frustrating. It involves the ability to work to tight deadlines, maintain confidentiality as well as the necessary transcription skills.

Previously, a business many have employed an assistant in-house to transcribe company documents, but with corporate cutbacks many of these roles have been absorbed into others and transcription is often now handled by an external company. Time is a valuable resource for business owners, so many outsource transcription to ensure they have more time to concentrate on their core business activities and increase their productivity.

Being a busy transcription business, we often receive around ten job enquiry emails per day either requesting information or submitting resumes for transcription work. Whilst this can be quite time consuming to review each email and resume, the process is often shortened by the occasional email that I don’t even waste my time reviewing. I have been shocked over the years at people’s lack of consideration and social etiquette with something as serious as asking for your employment.

The following can deter me from even considering an application:

1. Not addressing who the email is to;
2. Not researching the company details to find out who you are submitting your work enquiry to but rather opting for the quick and easy way of addressing ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ – The Transcription People website has my profile and picture and easily identifies me as the Director of the company.
3. Not writing any content at all but simply attaching a resume.

I sought some advice from a professional resume writer, Kirsty Stewart

Tips for writing a great resume and cover letter:

1. If you are not an advanced MS Word user make sure you use a nice, easy template so you don’t have to spend too much time playing around with it.  There are plenty of free examples online to choose from.
2. Don’t use italics or fancy fonts as they are hard to read.  Instead use bold to highlight areas of interest e.g. name, phone, job titles, course names.  Also only use black font with a white background.  Colours can be hard to read and don’t print and scan as clearly.
3. If printing your resume always use plain white paper only (I cannot stress this one enough).  A simple staple or paper clip is preferred.  Never bind your resume.
4. Use bullet points rather than paragraph format to list your work skills and experience.  However, just because you are using bullet points does not mean you should not write full sentences.
5. Always provide examples and specific information.  The difference between a good and a great resume will show how you made improvements and contributions in your previous position.  However, be truthful and don’t go overboard.

Poor Resume Example:

• Filing
• Reception
• Mailing

Good Resume Example:

• Attended to the electronic, manual and archiving of files for 3 Senior Lawyers of highly confidential information
• Managed a busy reception desk including answering incoming client queries, greeting customers and general administrative tasks
  • Organised both incoming and outgoing mail including organising couriers and attending to email correspondence

Better Resume Example:

• Created new procedures for the electronic, manual and archiving of confidential files that decreased time spent on task by 30 minutes a day
• Developed procedures manual for front desk reception tasks that included telephone messaging systems and client greeting procedures to streamline break cover and holiday leave
  • Organised both incoming and outgoing mail including organising couriers and attending to email correspondence

Finally, always proofread your documents.  If you can’t afford to hire a proof reader it is well worth your time to have someone you know to have a look at your resume for any mistakes.  A great tip for spotting mistakes is to read your resume and cover letter out loud.

When using a transcription service one thing you must check is the security of the file transfer mechanism used by that transcription service. The vast majority of audio we process at The Transcription People is confidential, this means that the audio our clients send to us must be sent to us across the internet securely, this means encrypting the audio from the sender all the way through to our servers.

How do we encrypt audio and what should you look for when hiring a transcription service?

There are a couple of common ways to transfer files across the internet, email and FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Neither of those are secure: email by default travels in the clear across the internet from the sender to the recipient. By “travels across the internet” we mean your email is passed from server to server, called hops, until it reaches its destination mail server. As email is sent in the clear the content could potentially be intercepted and read by others. FTP is also a very common way to move larger files and many smaller transcription services make use of this. FTP is fine for non confidential audio, using FTP again transmits data across the internet in the clear, unencrypted. When using FTP you are usually required to enter a user name and password to connect to the FTP server, that is just the key to open up access to a location on a server to deposit your file, it does not mean that your audio is encrypted. Both email and FTP can be secured; for email by using secure certificates for both the sender and receiver and for FTP to use the SFTP protocol (Secure File Transfer Protocol) which uses an encryption key exchange as the transfer is initiated, both of these are rarely used by the majority of small transcription services around Australia.

Recently there has been a boom in third party online file transfer services like SendThisFile.com which some transcription services have embraced. This allows senders to deposit large files, like audio, with the third party. This system does allow for secure file transfer but neither the sender or the receiver have any control of where the data is stored and who has access to that data.

Whats does The Transcription People do to secure file transfer?

At The Transcription People we use web browser secure file transfer across HTTPS direct on our own servers. HTTPS is a combination of Hypertext Transfer Protocol across SSL (Secure Socket Layers), which basically means that whatever is transmitted through the browser is encrypted. This is the protocol used by banks and credit card companies to secure data exchange between the browser and the server and is indicated by the padlock in the browser and the URL starting with https. Using this protocol the data is encrypted from the sender to the receivers server, across all internet hops.

We own and administer our own webservers, we do not share them with other websites or businesses and we have full access and control over our servers. Audio you securely transfer to us via our innovative and easy to use web application comes directly to us, securely across  HTTPS.

I love my role as proofreader for The Transcription People. Proofreading is one of several key quality control measures that The Transcription People have implemented to ensure their clients are totally happy with the transcription service we provide.

After one of our transcriptionists completes a transcript from a digital audio file it is my role to proofread the transcript whilst listening through the audio, before it is returned to the client.  It is my responsibility to ensure the transcript is 100% accurate.

Accuracy means ensuring that the typist’s interpretation of the audio she has transcribed is absolutely spot on and that there are no mishearings. If I am not absolutely certain of a word of phrase in the transcript then it will be noted as a time stamp of the audio time.

Transcript accuracy also means ensuring that any specific information provided by the client has been strictly adhered to.  It is also the proofreader’s responsibility to ensure the document is grammatically correct and that it is punctuated correctly.

Anyone typing at high speed will make errors and these errors are generally picked up when a document is proofed or read for a second time. It is impractical to expect 100% accuracy in transcription work and this is why the transcripts are proofed.

Many things will impact on the accuracy of a transcript, such as the quality of the audio, background noise, the clarity of the speakers, speakers muttering and speaking sotto voce, accents of speakers, two or three or more speakers all speaking at the one time, unusual names, place names, use of scientific or medical terms, accurate information provided or not provided by the client.

After the document has been proofed the tracked changed are returned to typists in an endeavour to reduce errors in subsequent transcripts, particularly with regard to format and style, punctuation, sentence construction and common words, names or phrases.

The Transcription People prides itself on producing high quality transcripts for its very valuable clients and the role of proofreader is an integral part of this process.