Following is an interview with one of our top performing freelancer, Mari Vaccaro. In this interview we talked about how she came to know about us, her reasons for working with us and her likes and dislikes about Scribie.
Please visit the following link for her scribie.com profile
https://scribie.com/profile/8d8bbb58555560c2900d53f708f2020e87edcf47
Please note that this interview was recorded with scribie’s latest teleconferencing solution which is integrated with our transcription system. Please send a mail to support@scribie.com or chat with us directly incase you have any further queries about our teleconferencing solution.
00:01 Yukti Yatish: Hello?
00:02 Mari Vaccaro: Hello.
00:05 YY: Yeah, is this Mari?
00:06 MV: Yeah.
00:08 YY: Yeah, hi Mari, this is Yukti here.
00:11 MV: Hi, how are you?
00:13 YY: I’m good, how are you doing?
00:15 MV: I’m good.
00:17 YY: Okay. Great. So is this how you pronounce your name? Mari or is there some other way?
00:23 MV: No, it’s right.
00:25 YY: Okay. Great then. So shall we get started?
00:29 MV: Sure.
00:31 YY: Okay. So Mari what do you do? Are you working from home or studying or what would be your profile at the moment?
00:43 MV: I am, I work full time in an office and I do part time transcription and I also go to school for medical transcription.
00:54 YY: Okay. So you are getting trained for medical transcription or you’re actually doing medical?
01:01 MV: Yes.
01:02 YY: Okay.
01:04 MV: I’m not doing it yet.
01:06 YY: Okay. That’s great. So how did you come to know about Scribie?
01:13 MV: I was taking an online class for general transcription and they had mentioned you in places to get references or to find work, and I check you on and I found you online.
01:25 YY: Okay. Okay, that’s good. So you took up a test and then you qualified for a freelancer then?
01:32 MV: Yes.
01:35 YY: Okay. That’s great. So, is this your extra pay kind of a work or how much would you earn from Scribie? It just pays your bill is it?
01:48 MV: It gives me, kind of makes up for the difference, you know when I come up short as far as… This one job I have isn’t paying everything. So I need something else to supplement, that’s what I’m trying to say, it supplements my income.
02:06 YY: Okay. That’s great then. And how many files do you usually work in a particular day, is it everyday or once in a while?
02:17 MV: I try to do it everyday, I don’t usually do it on the weekends but during the week I try to do it at least one everyday. Sometimes I’ll do two or three.
02:26 YY: At least one.
02:27 MV: Yeah.
02:28 YY: Okay. And how would you rate the quality of these files, like the audio quality?
02:34 MV: Most of them I found to be pretty good, there’s a few ones in a while that you just can’t even… But that’s rare.
02:42 YY: Okay. So how would you find the interface that you have for choosing your files and your editor?
02:55 MV: I really like that, I really like the ones you guys have. The editor especially because I use ExpressScribe a lot and I always wish that it was more like your editor. And I like the way it’s got the way you can choose them too and listen to the samples.
03:13 YY: Okay. So is there anything that you would want to be improved in the editor or the interface that you have for the freelancers?
[chuckle]03:36 YY: Can’t think of anything at the moment?
03:36 MV: I can’t think of anything.
03:39 YY: So is there any… Did you find any issues with it, something which is bothering you when you use it, something doesn’t work or have you found any other issues with the editor as of now?
03:54 MV: I don’t think I have. No, I don’t, maybe sometimes… Oh, sometimes I can’t tell if something… So there’s a word that the editor will pick up as misspelled and it won’t let you kind of… I’m not saying that right.
04:12 YY: Correct it, put it back.
04:14 MV: Like “don’t” it always picks that up as being wrong.
[chuckle]04:20 YY: Okay.
04:20 MV: And I can never figure out how to get it right and then you’d kind of try to look it up and it says look it up in the dictionary and it’s just… But it’s not, that’s not a major issue though it’s like a minor little… Other than that I don’t, not technically, no I enjoy using it.
04:37 YY: That’s great. So you have stopped using ExpressScribe completely, right? Or you…
04:43 MV: No, some I have to use it for school but every time I use it, I wish it was, it’s just something about it, just the hot keys never work right on it, whereas yours, and my foot pedal works with your’s and it doesn’t really work with ExpressScribe for some reason. So…
05:02 YY: But you’re aware that this integrated editor is free for all, right? You can always use it if you want.
05:09 MV: Yes, yeah.
05:11 YY: Okay. Okay great then. So how about our website? Have you recommended it to any of your friends or other freelancers who have, who are interested in?
05:24 MV: Yes, I have. Couple of people.
05:28 YY: So, they are already working for us or they have not yet qualified?
05:31 MV: I don’t know, I don’t know if they ever did or not.
05:35 YY: But you have referred?
05:36 MV: Yeah, I definitely sent out… When I first signed up, I sent out e-mails to whoever I could.
05:43 YY: Alright. Great then. So do you work for any other freelancing sites or is Scribie the only one?
05:52 MV: No, no other sites.
05:56 YY: Okay. Great. So just… Is there anything that you like particularly about Scribie? If you can think of a…
06:07 MV: I love listening to the files when they’re interesting, I love listening to the lectures. I kind of wish I could do the whole thing instead of just little snippets, because sometimes they’re really interesting and I wanna hear what they’re saying and it ends. I’m like, “Oh, what we’re they gonna say?” But that’s what I love about it, like some of them are really interesting.
06:27 YY: It’s more like a knowledge gathering thing, you get to know a lot of things.
06:31 MV: Yes. I was really excited once they had a law enforcement lecture for NYPD and I was excited to do that one.
[laughter]06:45 YY: Okay. So you got to do only one file or you could select more than one file?
06:51 MV: I could select more than one, yeah.
06:53 YY: Yeah, okay. So we have proofreading positions open and in that you probably would get a chance to hear to the complete files in case you are interested. But I think we also asked in the survey, if you are interested in proofreading. So maybe if you are interested, you could just write a mail to support@scribie.com and we can see if there are any vacancies, we can get in touch with you.
07:20 S12: Okay, great.
07:22 YY: It completely depends on your ratings and a lot of things that we consider, but yeah if you have a rating above 3.5 I think you are more than qualified to be a proofreader. It’s just about our load and the vacancies for that. So, we have some freelancers working for us as proofreader. Well, you’ll read the entire file, in case, as you said, you find it more interesting, so… You can just get in touch in case you want, if you are interested in it.
07:56 MV: Okay. Great, I will.
08:00 YY: Is there anything you don’t like about our website or about our policies and things like that?
08:12 MV: Sometimes the grading system.
08:17 YY: Mm-hmm?
08:18 MV: ‘Cause sometimes people mark off. I feel like if I get a bad grade because a punctuation that could go either way, that’s kind of a waste of time. I have to go and get that changed. You know what I mean?
08:31 YY: But I don’t think punctuation counts for grades. Do people consider it?
08:37 MV: It’s always changed, so if I dispute it, it’s always changed but…
08:42 YY: But you raise a dispute and… Okay.
08:45 MV: Yeah.
08:47 YY: Okay.
08:47 MV: But other than that… Yeah.
08:52 YY: Anything else?
08:53 MV: No, that’s the only thing and that’s not even really a major thing ’cause I’ve had a pretty good experience on there.
09:01 YY: And do you have any recommendations for us, like any advice for us for any scope of improvements you think we could do better there?
09:13 MV: It’ll be cool if you, I don’t know, if you could even expand into different methods of like video transcription or stuff like that, maybe do more kinds of things.
09:29 YY: Okay. So video… We do have video files, it’s just that it doesn’t make much sense for us to… I mean it doesn’t make much difference for us to use… To have video or audio files because ultimately it’s just the audio that has to be transcribed. So, we get a lot of video files but it’s just that we convert it into an audio version and then give it to our transcribers and anybody working for us. So we do have video files and there are a lot of files that come for subtitling and things like that. Maybe I’m not sure if you’ve come across them but we have some files but we are open to it, anybody who wants to get the transcription of the video files, we don’t have any such restriction for them. So, it’s just the customers who come to us and ordered a file, so…
10:20 MV: Right.
10:20 YY: Yeah.
10:23 MV: You ever think of doing any specializing in legal or anything like that? Or do you have to have a special…
10:30 YY: So, medical and legal have some kind of, … There are certain formalities that have to be completed before getting into legal and medical transcription. That’s one of the reasons why we don’t want to or we have not yet thought about getting into it but yeah, if people don’t mind the formalities, if they wanna keep it aside and come to us and order, we are most welcome to it. We get a couple of legal transcription but then medical transcription requires certain certification and all which we don’t have. So HIPAA certificate and all is required, which we don’t have and that’s the reason we are not into medical transcription and it requires a lot of training. But otherwise I think legal, business, everything comes under more or less general transcription and we get files actually from different, all different areas, so yeah.
11:29 MV: Okay.
11:31 YY: Okay. Okay, so I think that’s about it. That was a pretty short call and so, is there anything else that you wanna tell us or anything which comes to your mind which you want us to implement, any feature, any improvement? If you can think about it now or maybe you can just mail us and let us know, we’ll be very glad to implement it if we can.
12:03 MV: Okay. I can’t think of anything right now but, if I do I definitely will.
12:09 YY: Yeah. [chuckle] That’s fine. I mean, that’s why I told, you can just send us a mail and we’ll probably do as much as we can to implement it or if we can improve on.
12:21 MV: Okay.
12:21 YY: So, yeah that’s about it then Mari, it was great talking to you.
12:27 MV: You too.
12:27 YY: Hope you continue working for Scribie and yeah, keep up the good work then.
12:33 MV: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work for you, I appreciate it.
12:37 YY: Thank you so much. Okay then, have a great day.
12:41 MV: Alright. Thank you, you too. Bye-bye.
12:44 YY: Yeah. Bye-bye, see you.