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October is close enough

Posted By: You have 5 years already on 2007-07-31
In Reply to: Companies that require five years' experience...sm - anonymous

You don't have to be to the letter, to the day, to the exact moment. It's October in 3 months. Four years and 9 months is just as good as five years.


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Have been with MDI-MD since the end of October,
and to my knowledge they only hire MTs as Statutory Employees. 
I have been with Keystrokes since October....
I love it...wonderful supervisors and they truly appreciate their MTs...would recommend it to anyone...
Six years this October.
nm
Been with TT since October. Came from MQ. TT is the best company
I have ever worked for. The work is good and plentiful (I have only run out a couple of times and then I have had plenty on my backup). Tech support is good. Communication is great and I really feel like they care about making this a good place to work. The owner used to be an MT and so she knows what it means to do this job. I say go for it.
Been here since October and love it! :-) nm

And Chicago CSC is closing also as of end of October...nm
nm
Dear KS, problems since October, oh yes
My experience is very recent.... still waiting to hear from ....... who said I passed but she is too busy to talk to me for the past 3 weeks. Told me to be patient. I am glad my patience paid off in that I got a better job than KS was offering.
Knew this would happen !!! Did it in October, too. nm
x
I heard back the next day, but that was in October
Guess it just depends on the recruiter and how urgently they need MTs.
Yes it does. MQ bought Lanier in October 2003.
..
Not when I was hired (October). Great company. :-) nm

Same thing happened at TT the year before in October, too.

For those of us left with TT for 2 year, there is hardly ever sufficient work to work your negotiated shift.  Always asked to flex and move right into the weekends to get enough lines, if possible to even on weekends for everyone trying.


Actually, my hire date was October 9 last year
but since it was my first new job in almost 28 years, it was a BIG thing. I left the old job because my beloved boss closed down his practice to join another one, and the other group declined to hire me. Their loss. I was hired by a medium-sized national that just got acquired by a large national. We're 1 month into the new regime (so if we want to get technical, I actually have started a new job in the last 30 days) and the only thing that has really changed so far is the pay period is now twice a month instead of every 2 weeks. I still work the same shift, the same accounts, the same pay rates, the same supervisors and QA people, the same platform, everything.

There's been some grumbling on this board about the new company and how they lure you in with big promises and then you always seem to run out of work, coincidentally just before you achieve the gross pay required per period to be considered full time and thus eligible for benefits. Of course I can only speak for myself, but I haven't seen any such thing, and the only times I have run out of work (briefly) have been on or around holidays. If the work is coming in slowly at any other time, our people actually call the clients and ask them what's going on. (And then they send out e-mails to let us know what's happening.) I work a 32-hour week (by my choice) but probably at least 9 days out of 10, there is enough work that I could work a full 8 hours if I wanted to. (And this pay period I came in at 25 percent over the gross minimum--and I know for a fact my own pay rate is actually on the lower end of the scale, so reaching that minimum is NOT exactly difficult. At least not for me.)

We don't get a lot of extraneous e-mails, only necessary announcements and requests, and we're all on IM so we can always find somebody to help if we have a question. We are also not only encouraged but strongly urged to send ANYTHING doubtful to QA, even if we have to leave 100 blanks in a report. They'd rather have a QA blank than a guess. And QA has NEVER gotten the least bit snarky with me; even when it's been a real duh! mistake on my part, the worst I might get is a smiley face with a gently-worded note pointing out the error.

I have a co-worker who was hired the same day I was, on the same account. She has a neighbor who works for the company that just acquired us, and LOVES it; in fact, she was encouraging my co-worker to jump ship and c'mon over, until we all found out we were all comin' on over anyway, as of April 1.
In fairness, we are supposd to get written info in October. nm
nm
The letter about the pay cut in ASR was mailed out and is to begin October 1. No question about it.
Didnt you get the letter.
Show of hands: Who at MQ is excited its finally OCTOBER?
Packet time and for many, Big Decision time...
October is usually slow. This week is a Jewish holiday sm

I believe, Sukkoth.  Don't think the grass is greener anywhere.  The only thing that irks me about QT is someone saying they'll have work for me in 10 minutes, a half hour, or an hour, and nothing ever comes through.  My time is valuable to me.  Sitting around and waiting for nothing really, really irks me.  Other than that, I really love this company, and it would take something really serious, like them outsourcing or selling out to MQ, to get me to leave.  However, I'd really like it if they'd not leave me hanging for work when they say they're putting some in my queue.  Maybe I should send them a bill for waiting time.  MY TIME IS MONEY!! 


I work parttime as an IC for another national which really helps!  When one is slow, the other is busy.  Nice balance. 


Anyone with BIG Enterprises out of Maryland? No reply to 2 resumes in October. nm
s
Same thing in October, then accounts went to voice recognition,

causing low work situations at times.  They push those jobs through VR and Exspeech rapidly and I found Exspeech to be one of the worst editing platforms I had ever used.


Hopefully, TT will pick up accounts in order to keep all those 25+ MT's they are advertising for busy -- because the jobs on these new accounts go through VR at a rapid rate, and regular transcribing disappears in a hurry.  If these 25+ MT's don't like Exspeech method of editing, then you will most likely end up with lack of work very soon.  It happened with the *big hiring spree* back in October last year !  The mass hiring of MT's are used to *train* dictators for Exspeech.   The pay reduction is at the rate of 50% less for editing.


I suppose most companies in this business are going in that direction now to make larger profits. 


No, they built a new one last year and moved into it in October or November. sm
I think they have a really big office now, from what I heard.

The person I am talking about started the second week in October for HR but the recruiter has been
with us since late summer.

I am going to dig into this, so thank you for the information. There is too much back and forth going on here to sort through what is true and what is not, so I am going to take some time and take it to my coordinator.

It might seem petty to a lot of you that we are willing to do this, but reputation is important and we have all been working too hard to let things like this happen.

I know that there will be flames here but the truth is that the Keystrokes Management Team has been working very hard to reverse a lot of things that happened in the past in order to make KS the best company in the industry. This takes time.

I do know that there are a lot of happy MTs at KS as we do not have a lot of emplpyee turnover, but I also know that one unhappy person can be like poison. Rather than attacking that person or persons, we are working on the reasons that they are unhappy and working to change that.

If KS was such a bad company, it would not grow as it has. I am not saying that they are perfect, just that they are not as this board portrays.

Another thing is that so many people attack the owner and say that she is unprofessional. You obviously have not met her. She is all business with her employees and customers and actually a fun person to be around as well. I have never met someone who gets as much done as she does and her customers love working with her.

I just think everyone should form their own opinions.
Wall Street Journal article, October 2004
A friend sent this to me. UCSF heard from an overseas MT who had not been paid that if she did not receive the $$ owed her she would publish the reports on the internet. There was a lot of followup to this which I will not go into here, but why wouldn't this sort of thing still be possible.

Later that year there was a report of a group of MTs in Bangladesh who tried to force a change in their local management by threatening to make transcribed documents public.

After that California was supposedly looking at a bill to disallow sending confidential medical reports overseas as they are not bound by HIPPA. Never heard what came of that.

I still tell these stories to anyone considering sending work abroad. I just wish some of them overseas would be stupid enough to actually pull a few stunts like that and then see how much work we lose.
Close, but not quite.
x
All I have to do is close it out.
NM
Sure you do, if you don't have a close friendship with
Don't be fooled.  It has been said here before that the office staff are all pretty much related in one way or another, and they are.  So why couldn't those working at home be close friends and relatives too?
pretty close to DQS
a little different
If they were very close friends, yes I would let them know. sm
However, I would be very tactful in doing so. Maybe give them a hint to start looking for another company or job that you have some inside information...etc. If they don't get the hint, then just tell them.

Chances are the company may know this is coming and didn't tell the MTs. Most companies know when their contracts are up for bid or they are given 30-90 day notice the hospital dropping them. So, if the owners of the company do not have the common courtesy to let their MTs know, shame on them! It happens all the time in the corporate world.

Little bit of advice - do not get into gossipy detail, he said, she said. Just do it with diplomacy.

Good luck whatever you decide.
this will never come close to mtjbs. n/m
/
they are based close to me
s
I doubt it.....Not even close
nm
fat cat may be close to retirement sm
but she still has some humanity about her! Probably why she still has a job so close to retirement.

Not all companies have the attitudes that you post. In this business, there is absolutely no call for that kind of attitude. The companies can cover their butts. Half of them don't have work anyway.

I have been through exactly what the poster posted and I told MQ to stick it after 23 years. Have not had a problem getting a job and have been upfront and honest about the situation I found myself in.

When an employer calls someone at hospice and starts ragging on them, knowing full well there is no work to do the 8 HOURS I WAS SCHEDULED PER WEEK, then its time to get out. I did and never looked back. Probably was the boost I needed to get out of that place.

I applaud the OP for doing what she did. Family comes before any doggone job. She won't have a problem geting UE either. She applied for FMLA, they denied her, what else can she do? FMLA is there for situations just like this.

I don't blame her for telling the higher-ups. I would have let them know too before I left that place and never looked back.

Wish I knew waht place it was!
It should be getting close to the time where
this conversation disappears off the board. Did anyone ever notice when we start discussing line counts at a CERTAIN company the conversation disappears - poof, like it never existed.

I've been noticing the same problems, and I think I work at the same place as all of you. I have also noticed that my own formula for adding lines up using the word count, which I usually took the count in word and divided by 1.123, and it equalled out pretty darn close to the other count. Now that doesn't add up anymore. Wow, something is definitely wrong with this place. I think it's time to jump overboard for me.
Not even close - laughing
I am just one who has been trying to offer 'food for thought' posts, that's all.


Only 20 years of exp. here, but that's close enough,

right? 


I worked for them for about a year.  It was an okay experience.  I had a surgery center account which was small and just about the perfect amount of work for an 8-hour day, plus it was M-F 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.  I didn't like it that my primary was somebody else's secondary, so sometimes I would get kicked to my secondary because somebody else was on my primary and it wasn't big enough to share.  My secondary account was slim pickins so I usually actually got kicked straight to my tertiary, which they PROMISED would NEVER run out of work, but of course it did, sometimes for days at a time.  The one thing that bothers me most is running out of work.  I get really nervous about that.  Add to that the new e-mails about transitioning to VR and I said I'm outta here.  I just wasn't interested at the time in doing that.  


Maybe I should have stayed and my account would have been safe from VR - I don't know.  I just didn't want to have to worry about it.  All in all, other than the fact that they don't seem to offer more than 8 cpl, they were an okay company.  Not horrible, not wonderful.  Mine was a Diskriter account, not a hospital employee account, which are two entirely different things.


Oh yeah, the QA for my account was an absolute ditz.  I wasn't impressed with her  AT ALL. 


How many MTs?? Not even close to 400 unless you are counting your offshore MTs.
Tell everyone how many MTs and QA Specialists you lost in one months' time.
Do you see this as coming very close to Spheris. Is this what this is all about.
:
Nope, close but no cigar.
Spheris purchased Avicis (formerly HealthScribe) but not Acusis.
Archaic doesn't even come close.
nm
Although I am not in management, I work close with them. sm
They do not offshore. If you have experience, negotitate your line rate. You will get very close to what you want if you are good.

They do work with new MTs, which I think is a great thing for them. Everyone needs someplace to get the experience.

If I had to say one negative thing about them it is this... they are pretty strict on the schedule you set for yourself.

They do offer 2nd and 3rd shift differential. There is also a weekend differential. They do offer further bonuses from time to time.

I personally like their software since it is integrated with Word. It is very easy to use and easy to learn.

Although I am full time, I cannot elaborate on their benefits. I know they have medical, but no dental or vision as far as I know. However, my spouse carries the insurance so that was never an issue for me.

I hope this helps. I know a lot of people do not like Softscript. I can say if you would have asked me 1-1/2 years ago, I probably would have agreed with them, but there have been a lot of changes and they really are for the better of the employee not just the company.
Guess didn't look close enough
Didn't put 2 and 2 together (Jennifer Poole and RC Transcription).  So right.  We deserve more than 5 cpl.  What a rip!  Case closed:(
oops supposed to be close - sorry, just got up
x
I was offered a position but was not even close
to what I make per line, especially since I just got my 2nd raise!!!!  WOOHOO.
I have never run out of work at Keystrokes, nor have I come close
I have 2 ER accounts, and they both keep me very busy. It is true that they make sure that everyone working there has enough work before they will hire more people. That's why I love them so much.
Webmedx comes pretty close...sm
to meeting your requirements. They do have a fair amount of ESL and I doubt you could get a M-F schedule, but everything else they can and do offer.
Nothing to worry about there, they pay for it, you do it at a clinic close to you.
Pee in a cup, blah blah, no big deal.  Good gig if you can get it.
Not even close. They only have temporary work right now. nm
nm
I'm pretty close - about 12-13K/month.
=
I found a sweet job close to my home. sm
I am trying to work outside of my home.  I enjoyed my first day and I have my fingers crossed that it will work out.  It is not transcription though.  It is copy typing and I hope I can become good at it and fast.  I hate creeping along at a snail's pace.  I'm just used to flying on the keyboard.  Good luck everyone. 
I'm an IC, I adhere to a close to set schedule, am loyal and the first day that I
hear employees get preferential treatment over ICs, I'll jump ship.  I am an IC because my husband has better health benefits and they are cheaper than my company.  We still have line counts to make just like employees and bills to pay, etc, plus we don't get vacation, etc, so need to work steadily just to keep up if we do need to take a day off or are off sick.
Yeah, the accounts keep close tabs SM

on who is typing their work at my company and I know for a fact they have demanded that certain people not be allowed to type their work, so I know that does happen.  It also used to happen in the hospital I worked.


As much as I feel for you having a rough time, in business (and this is a business) there is really not much room for error here and these companies can't keep people who continually make errors - otherwise the account goes bye-bye and the company has to replace it with another account, not easy to do these days.


NOW it is time to close the barn door???
They are falling like a house of cards! What else can we expect? We put our faith in some people who had no idea what direction to take. Most of them were at the end of their careers to boot and, in my opinion, not really motivated to do a lot of real good. Their major concern seemed to be flying all over the country spreading gossip on the dues money I was paying them and accomplishing NOTHING. Is offshoring their fault entirely? No, but what did they do to prevent it until very recently? I gave up my membership and CMT 4 years ago. Good riddance!