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Be an accomplished Business Transcriber or Virtual Secretary in 3 weeks

Every company that is registered with the stock market has to stick to the condition of conducting quarterly meetings of their businesses thereby updating their investors on their level of business performance. As these meetings move ahead, a coordinator has to capture the meeting, store it in the form of an audio file, and get it converted to text by a transcriptionist. The transcriptionist listens to the audio file, modifies it to text and sends it back to the customer in text format.

Business transcription is all about transforming a recorded audio file into a verbatim transcript for companies across industrial domains. Global business owners want to focus their energies on their primary business and not on routine tasks of documenting, filing, mailing correspondences and other forms of administrative work. The demand for low cost administrative assistance by many start-up companies looking to save on overhead has evolved the business transcription service to expand and now include virtual secretarial duties (aka virtual assistants-VA) as they increasingly serve to fulfill other office administrative duties without the need for a physical presence in the employer’s home country.

With the availability of high-speed satellite links, it is now entirely possible to provide this service from the Philippines to a client-employer across the globe. The best part about a career in business transcription is that the training required to become a competent BT or VA takes only 3 weeks provided the student-applicant possess basic entry-level skills to gain admission into MTC’s General Transcription 1 (GT1) program. But even without the basic entry level skill, pre-requisite courses that include touch typing, computer operations, listening for accents, English proficiency and familiarity with transcription technology are now available.

MTC Introduces New, More Affordable Transcription Programs in 2009

Many large business owners today have a global view of the outsourced transcription industry and generally do not pose objections to getting the job done outside of country borders as long as it gets done on time and work is consistently accurate.

The good news is, the increasing demand for transcribers is now not just limited to medical but also now include legal and general/business transcriptions. The demand for qualified transcribers has continued its upswing trend and Davao City operators have continued to experience to date some degree of shortage of qualified and trained transcribers in the areas of medical and legal transcriptions.

MTC Academy’s desire to provide more value has given rise to a curriculum innovation that now includes program tracks in building transcription skills at the intermediate and advanced levels for General, Legal and Medical transcriptions. The tracks are so designed to enable a beginner-student to primarily build basic skill sets such a keyboarding, computer operations, listening for accents, English proficiency and familiarity with transcription technology at the BASIC or pre-requisite level.

For flexibility, the MTC curriculum allows students (college graduates or undergraduates from any course background) possessing basic skills to get an exemption from some pre-requisite courses and move forward to enrolling in any of the 3 main transcription tracks General Transcriptions 1(GT1), Legal Transcriptions 1 (LT1) or Medical Transcriptions 1 (MT1). To further season the transcription-trainee, MTC encourages its students to complete the advance programs of GT2, LT2 or MT2.

Using the revolving curriculum for most of its programs allowing classes to start every month, MTC Academy has also restructured its program costs thus enhancing the value for money for all of its courses. This innovation has brought about a reduction in tuition fees ranging from 30-50% for all of its 2009 programs.

Supplying more than 50% of Davao City’s manpower requirement to its corporate partners, MTC Academy located at E.Quirino Avenue corner Gen Luna St. (082-2226822) continues to fill up vacancies for transcribers by providing job placement assistance for its transcription graduates to companies here in Davao and as far as Manila and Cebu.

Transcriptions - What's in it for you?

What do you get with all the hard work once you've completed transcription training?

I got my first job as an Admin Assistant for a medical transcription school. At first, I didn't understand what someone would get from transcription training. But as days went on, and our of curiosity, I browsed the Internet and read some articles about it.

Although I have not yet finished my training in medical transcription (MT), I was able to get a part-time and home based job as a business transcriptionist. You might as me how I got a client. I was able to get the part-time job because if the people I knew. You might also ask me why I took MT Course and not Business Transcription Course (BT). The reason for that is because the medical transcription course has a higher competency. And the higher the competency, the greater the chance to land a job. And besides, the longer the training, the better for I would be able to familiarize the work in transcriptions and to familiarize the computer as well. And another thing is that, the more transcription practices with different slang and accents, the better.

My point here is that, during these times when there are too many graduates and few hiring positions available, the newly graduates are forced to leave another year unproductive because they can't seem to find a job.

The best assets that every aspiring transcriptionist should acquire are: 1) good English skills, 2) 50-60 words per minute speed in typing, 3) ability to listen very well with different slang and accents, 4) editing and proofreading skills, and 5) computer and Internet savvy.

I am not saying that everyone who has the skills is ready to become a transcriptionist. At first, I thought transcription jobs are easy to do. That was a wrong perception. Transcription is about learning the job and loving the job that you do. You can earn from doing transcription and you can also learn from the transcripts that you are doing. It only requires dedication, patience, and not more than a year and a half to study.

WHAT's HOT ABOUT BUSINESS TRANSCRIPTION?

You have probably heard of transcription before. Medical transcription gets a lot of attention, but there are some other types of transcription as well. One of it, which also shows a large demand in the Business Process Outsourcing industry (BPO), is the Business Transcription.

Transcription services are required in almost every area of the business spectrum. The very need to put the spoken word into text automatically creates demand for Business Transcription. Too much of transcription work in corporate world can put undue load on the existing staff and so companies outsource them to business transcriptionists. Realizing this, more and more companies are now going for transferring their transcription work to a different company. This can be cheap too if the company goes for outsourced business transcription services.

To get transcription work outsourced, the company records their meetings, seminars or conventions. This is then uploaded to a specified location from where the transcription company can download it to start off with the transcription work. Transcription companies accept audio files in various formats. MS Word or any other text processing software is used for creating transcripts. These transcripts would then be sent via email or simply uploaded to the location from where the company can have it.

Outsourced business transcription companies hire employees that need not be in sync with the rules and regulations of the country from where their clients send them recordings. However, many transcription tasks include understanding data and transcribing accordingly. Also, American accents and terms may be hard to follow for home grown transcriptionists. To avoid such problems, a Filipino transcriptionist should at least be exposed in a comprehensive training program for Business Transcriptions to familiarize themselves with business terms and develop their listening skills. They should be exposed in different files that can have American accent, Asian accent or even European accent. This ensures the best rates with no compromise on quality. MTC Academy Davao is now offering its course in Business Transcription. You can call them at 222-6822 for any inquiries.