A good transcriptionist needs to have good communication skills along with a strong English and grammar base. There are not many schools offering courses for general transcription. The reason is that general transcription pertains to a general field, open to a wide array of topics. In addition, because, there is no specific industry in relation with general transcription, it will be a tough task to find a college providing such a course. Some business colleges offer transcription as a part of other courses. This course will generally include transcribing and deciphering speech, which forms the core of a transcription job.

The best way would be to use internet as a medium for training in transcription. The student pursuing this course through online mediums will be given detailed description about the ergonomic setup before the actual training itself. The training would include sample audios, which are to improve the student’s listening abilities to increase his brain- ear coordination. This will also include typed instructions about punctuations including the paragraph breaks and tabs, the page numbering and the formatting. A good dedicated practice will help in increasing the speed and accuracy of the students. Online programs will approach a systematic procedure to ease out the intricacies in transcription. Good programs will let you have good audio samples, which will be of good use to the students. Podcast features will enable the student to use digital recording software as well. In addition, there will be descriptions about the autocorrect options to maintain a decent speed while typing.Transcription companies hiring for positions of transcriptionists also offer training, which is known as in- house training. The training schedule includes a training manual, which would include the necessary details about the basics of transcription. The candidate will be expected to adhere to the rules set forth by the company even if the general standards in the industry are different. Audio and video files will hold the transcription process, the formatting, and in general software to be used by the trainees to practice.

Apart from these, a student can teach himself to transcription without any formal education. The most important requirement for transcription is a good typing speed and listening abilities. These skills can easily be developed by constant practice. Software for the same is available which train from the beginner level typing speed to an advanced stage. The student can start typing while watching TV or listening to the radio about what you hear. A simple Word document or Notepad will suffice for the cause. You can probably get transcription software for controlled playback, which would be efficient for practicing purposes.

General transcription training does not usually require an official college degree. It takes immense practice and good communications and language skills to make a good transcription. This can be achieved with regular practice using the respective software and improving the efficiency.

You can’t have it both ways
If any of the meetings you attend are unproductive; what are you doing about it? Are you contributing to the late starts, lack of focused agendas or digressions that make the meeting run over? A little self-discipline and efficient time management can transform the effectiveness of meetings, improve decision making and develop powerful teamwork. But it is all about keeping the fundamental principles in mind.

There is a popular and often misquoted piece of research from the 1950s by George Miller that the maximum number of items a person can hold in their mind at once is seven. More recent findings show that actually we can only hold about 4 items or concepts in our mind at any one time. It reduces rapidly to only one if things get more complex, if we are tired or if we are over or under-stressed in any way. For example, you may find it easy to keep 4 numbers in your mind, but can you recall the four sentences in this paragraph without rereading? No wonder meetings often seem so chaotic and full of misunderstandings – no one can really understand what is going on!

Keeping you on track
There is a bewildering amount of information out there about how to run a meeting but I like to keep things very simple – the way your brain likes it! So here are the four fundamental principles of effective meetings to keep you on track.

1. Why? – Are the purpose and outcomes clear?
2. What? – Is there a clear Agenda with specific times allocated for each item?
3. Who? – Who really needs to be there? What contribution will they be expected to make?
4. When? – Is the timing appropriate? For attendees and availability of information: i.e. time of Day, Week, Month, Year?

Keeping the above in mind when planning for a meeting or considering them when you are invited to a meeting may help you decide if it will be a productive use of your precious time, or not. Can the outcome be achieved without holding a meeting? Will a phone call or brief one-to-one chat suffice?

A little more detail
Keeping to the theme of simplicity, let’s look at each of the four principles in a little more detail.

1. Why? – Are the purpose and outcomes clear?
Regularly reviewing the purpose and effectiveness of meetings is a healthy activity. Things change and evolve so the original purpose of the meeting may no longer be relevant; this is especially true in Small and Medium businesses.

2. What? – Is there a clear Agenda with specific times allocated for each item?
There are really only four key purposes for a meeting and it can be helpful to identify each item on the agenda with one of the following:

* (I) For Information
* (Di) For Discussion
* (Dc) Requires Decision
* (A) Requires Action

Some other tips for the agenda include:

* Keep it short and have stated objectives including the coding above: know what you want to accomplish.
* Put the difficult or contentious issues first. Otherwise time runs out and they get conveniently avoided or put off.
* Use a logical order of items. Check if any items require other items to be completed first.
* Give a specific amount of time to each agenda item. This is one of the most critical skills of the chair.
* Avoid allowing too many items under Any Other Business (AOB). If possible, avoid AOB altogether, if it is not on the Agenda it needs a separate discussion.

Consider what sort of record or ‘minutes’ you need from the meeting. Most meetings only require the agenda, who attended and the key action points agreed. There should also be a strict rule about when the minutes will be distributed, ideally within 24 hours of the meeting.

3. Who? – Who really needs to be there? What contribution will they be expected to make?
If you find that there are people in the meeting who are not contributing, it is important to ask why they are there. Are all people attending required to contribute? If not why not? Perhaps they only need to be there for part of the meeting.

It can be very useful to have a revolving Chair and Scribe. This means that at each meeting there is a different member of the team taking the minutes / action points and they become the chair for the next meeting. This is a great way to empower team members and give them an understanding of the challenges of running an effective meeting. It also has the added value of them respecting the Chair and Scribe roles and being a better participant.

You can also consider the costs of everyone attending, including the ‘lost opportunity’ costs. It uses a simple calculator to estimate salaries of everyone in the room and provides a running cost of the meeting as the seconds tick by.

4. When? – Is the timing appropriate: for attendees and availability of information: i.e. time of Day, Week, Month, Year?
Businesses usually have a particular rhythm including management accounts, sales and marketing activity and production / service cycles. It is good to plan the meeting on a regular basis so it becomes a deadline for the collection of relevant data, reports and actions. Most of my clients use a monthly senior management meeting to review the Key Indicators of Performance and the Actions to address specific issues. This is where they hold each other to account and identify allocation of resources to specific problems. Many also have a longer quarterly or 6-montly off-site meeting to look at specific issues in more detail and take some time to work ‘on’ the business rather than ‘in’ the business.

Continuous improvement
Making a number of minor improvements is easier and less disruptive than implementing major changes so why not review and evaluate your own meetings with our simple ‘Meeting Evaluation Form’. You can distribute it to attendees and ask them to complete it at the end of the meeting to get some instant feedback. Then simply choose one area to tweak at the next meeting and measure the impact with the same form. This is particularly useful feedback for the Chair when you implement the ‘Revolving Chair’ idea mentioned above.

There are three things that make a chart ugly:

* Lack of Focus

* Wrong Type of Chart

* Poor Color

There are two ways a chart can lack focus; unrelated variables and variables outside of the span of control.

A chart that shows unrelated variables lacks focus. Putting the Accounts Payable with Inventory and Share Price doesn’t make sense. It is like the Sesame Street game. One of these things is not like the others. Share Price is not directly related to either Inventory or Accounts Payable.When the variables presented in a chart are not all within the control of the viewer, there is a lack of focus. If you can’t change a variable, why show it?

Wrong Type of Chart

It is surprising how often people choose the wrong type of chart. Usually it is because a tool or vendor hypes the type of chart. The best current example is the gauge. The Business Intelligence industry has included gauges in its tools. The message is “You need to simplify your reporting like a car dashboard.”

The problem with this logic is that the car dashboard instruments provide information you use once and forget. If you look at your speedometer and see you are doing 75 in a 45 zone, you slow down. In a business though, you need to know whether 75 is a good or bad number. To make this decision you need to see what the history has been. Has it been increasing or decreasing?

The other reason for choosing the wrong type of chart is making the wrong decision between point in time and time series chart types.

A point in time chart shows the values for a number of variables or organizations at a single point in time. Chart types which can show a single point in time are pie, stacked bar, and bar charts. The pie chart is the most commonly used single point of time chart type. A pie chart shows the relationship between segments for a single point of time. When it is misused, you have multiple pie charts of the same variables for different time periods. Variations in pie charts are difficult to compare which makes them the wrong choice.

Time series charts show one or more variables over a range of time. The most common chart types used to show time series are line, bar, and surface (also known as area) charts. These chart types are made into the wrong choice by using the 3 dimensional (or 3D) features of the charting software. In my opinion the 3D capability should never be used. It hides numbers behind other numbers or makes it hard to impossible to see the scale behind the lines, bars or areas.

Poor Color

Color should be a tool to help people read and make sense of your charts. The problem with color is the way people choose to apply colors. The two main problems are mismatched colors and inconsistent colors.

Mismatched colors are those which make it hard to read or even look at the colors. Too much contrast or too little both cause problems. Bright colors with different shades are hard to read when presented side by side. Red and green are great at Christmas but lousy when you are trying to make a useful chart. Other colors which are similar are especially bad choices when making a bar chart. Examples include yellow and green, red and orange, and purple and blue.

Choosing colors for each chart separately creates confusion. Using a legend does not solve this problem. You should select colors over a group of charts, not on each individual chart. Use colors consistently to show organizations across charts.

Making your charts ugly is easy. But it is just as easy to make charts that are easy to read and useful to your audience. Take the time and make your charts better.

So who decides ‘what next’? Who decides which direction you’re going to go in? Your old university careers advisor? A recruitment consultant? A fortune teller? Here at Position Ignition, we believe that only you can make the decision if you truly want to take control of your life. Whether it’s a slight shift in career direction or a total about-face, it’s up to you to decide ‘what next’? It is you who must ultimately decide the one career direction you’re going to try next.Why only one direction at a time? Isn’t it better you hedge your bets by pursuing several different avenues at the same time? The truth is, if you try to focus on too many options and ideas at once, you won’t end up truly focusing on any of them and your chances of successfully changing direction will decrease dramatically. If you really want a shift in direction to lead to career progression or increased professional contentment, you must narrow down your options and then choose the one angle that’s best for you at this present time. We are dedicated to helping people adopt a focused approach and narrow down their choices; from what our clients have told us, this is an effective, proven way of finding a new career direction.

Even though it’s up to you to make the decisions and take control of your career, it is important to include your partner and your family in your decision. After all, they are a significant part of your daily life and are directly affected by your day-to-day work. They can’t, however, make the final decision for you. Getting the balance right between involving them and retaining control can be tricky and that’s why we offer support and advice not just to individuals, but also to couples and family units. Together we can move you towards deciding what next, and that decision will still be yours and yours alone.

I just watched a group of mid-level managers react to a decision that their management team made – three months ago. There clearly is not commitment amongst this group (once again, these are mid-level managers).

The background – The management team made a strategic decision that impacted everyone within this 75 person company. Somewhere along the decision-making-process-timeline, they thought it would be a good idea to gather input from their employees (novel idea, ha?). So, as a result, they conducted a series of focus groups, gathered employee input, and conducted a follow-up town hall meeting to respond to input gathered during the focus group sessions.Sounds like a good process right? Unfortunately, the employees “sensed” that the management team had already made the decision prior to conducting the focus groups. So, it should come as no surprise that three months later employees still had concerns. Worst of all, the employees who were grumbling the most were the mid-level managers.

Lessons learned?

1. If your managers aren’t on board, your employees aren’t either.

2. Involve people early in the process. Not after you have made a decision. If you aren’t really interested in asking for your employees’ input, then don’t ask. And certainly don’t cover it up with a reactionary and artificial outreach.

3. It takes more time upfront to gather peoples’ ideas, but shorter in the long term because they’ll be committed to the decision.

4. People will disagree with the decisions you make. As long as the decisions are legal and ethical AND you valued your employee’s input and contributions, it won’t matter. On the other hand, if you don’t listen, employees won’t be committed.

5. Just because you communicated something once doesn’t mean people heard the message you are trying to send. Over communicate and use different channels of communication.

6. Tell people what you know AND, more importantly, what you don’t know.

Have you ever stepped back and watched people respond to a decision you made? You should. It’s really an interesting dynamic to watch.