Only 20 hours of audio to do now

The client took a closer look at their tapes and realized they only have about 20 hours of audio to be transcribed. We can definitely handle that in a week!

Today I'm going to work on getting an oral history interview transcription done that is quite long. I need to sort of clear the decks before the big work load hits at the end of next week. But I love being busy and I love the fact that I am not unemployed or having a slow time of it! Praise God!

40 hours of audio to be transcribed in one week?

Wow, I have a potential client that needs 40 hours of audio transcribed in one week! And they are on micro cassette tapes! So I will need to convert the tapes to MP3 files and then have them transcribed. The only way that I know to convert to MP3 right now is to play them out of my micro cassette player and record onto my digital recorder. Is there a better, faster way? Sure hoping so. I think it's going to be an intense week! And I don't even know when I'll be receiving the tapes for sure. We should know today though. The cool thing is we found each other on Twitter. My first business contact I've made through Twitter. Cool!

Overwhelmed with Transcription applicants

Find Transcription Work dot com issued a notice that I was looking for transcriptionists to help with overflow. What a response! I must have gotten over 500 applications! Just a little overwhelming. Unfortunately, a lot of them were from out of the country and my CPA says I need people with Social Security Numbers, so I had to immediately get rid of probably 150 or so. I still needed to weed some out, so I decided to discard all those who did not have a foot pedal. I mean, how serious can you be about running a transcription business if you don't even have a foot pedal?

That still left me with several hundred applicants. I'm sure there are some real gems in there, as well as some not so great transcriptionists. I'm going through the very tedious process of testing a few each week. I can't do too many ~ I just don't have the time. But there are times when I just need more help and I want to be able to call on good transcriptionists to help me out.

I've gotten so that I grade their tests. Kind of silly, but it's the only way to keep it all straight. So the "A" people are the first ones I will call on for overflow. They are the ones I want. They are also the ones that are harder to find. The "B" people will be good in a pinch to help with certain types of jobs that have a longer turnaround time and I can take more time to make the corrections needed to their work. The "C" people get a rejection e-mail. That is the hardest thing for me. I think the one I have written now is too abrupt and short. I don't want to be mean. But I don't want to give out false hope to people either. It's a fine line.