You’re In Control

Working at Speechpad.com couldn’t be more flexible. You get to choose when, how much, and how often you want to work, whether it’s a couple of hours each week, or 10 hours per day, 7 days a week. You also get to choose the jobs you want to do. Want to work a full day on a couple of long jobs? No problem. Have a half hour to kill, and want to be productive? Find a small job and get to work. You also get to choose where you want to work: home office, library, kitchen table, hotel room. Work anywhere you want as long as you are complying with our confidentiality requirements.

The Speechpad Worker Website

All work is done via the Speechpad worker website. Once you’ve gone through the application process and been approved to work, you’ll be given a Speechpad worker account that allows you to sign into the worker website. There you’ll be able to find work, get qualified for more types of jobs, and view your work history and ratings.

The Job Board

The Job Board is where you’ll look for work. You can filter the jobs based on your preference. For example, if you only want to see short jobs, you can filter by length. By default, you’ll see all jobs, some of which you won’t be immediately qualified to do. Each job will have an Accept Job button or a Get Qualified button. You can click an Accept Job button and get to work right away, or you can click some of the Get Qualified buttons to find out what qualifications you’d need to do those jobs. You can also select a filter to show only the jobs you’re currently qualified to do.

Each job has an allotted time (a deadline) for you to submit your final work. The allotted time is shown on each job, and the clock begins as soon as you click the Accept Job button. If you run out of time, you won’t be paid for the job, so be sure you’re able to dedicate the necessary time before you accept a job.

Qualifications

The Qualifications section of the website shows you the qualifications you’ve already been granted (green), and other qualifications you can apply for (light grey). The more qualifications you have, the more jobs will be available to you. To apply for a qualification, simply click on it. You’ll be taken to a page with instructions on how to proceed.

Some qualifications require you to learn a new style guide, others might require a background check, and some are by invitation only. For example, if you’ve done a large number of jobs and have a high rating, you might be granted the Reviewer qualification. This would allow you to do review jobs, where you’ll edit transcripts done by other workers.

Your Rating

The Speechpad system calculates a rating for each worker based on the quality of the work you’ve submitted. Each job receives a rating based on how many mistakes were corrected by our reviewers. The fewer mistakes, the higher the rating. Your overall rating is a running average of your last 10 rated jobs.

Your rating helps determine what jobs you are eligible to accept. Each job has a minimum worker rating requirement. The higher your rating, the more jobs you’ll be able to do. The jobs with higher rating requirements also tend to pay more money. If your rating falls below a certain level, you’ll no longer be able to work on the Speechpad system. Therefore, it’s important for you to keep your rating high by taking the time to review your work prior to submitting. If your rating drops, you can improve it by consistently providing high quality work that adheres to the style guide for each job.

Work History

The My Work section of the website shows you a history of your previous jobs as well as any job you might currently be working on. If you have work in progress, it will show up at the top with a green “Get To Work” button. That will take you back to the transcription or captioning console where you can resume your work.

A table shows a history of all the jobs you’ve accepted, along with the rating you received and the amount you earned for each job. There are search and filtering tools to help you find specific jobs. You can click on any job to see the corrections that were made by Speechpad reviewers. It’s important to do this, so that you can learn from mistakes and improve your rating.

Transcription Console

The transcription console is where most of the work for Speechpad jobs is done. There is an editor on the left where you can type in the transcript, or edit an existing transcript if you are doing a review job. On the right there will either be an audio player or a video player, depending on the type of media the customer submitted. Certain foot pedals can be used to control the playback of the audio or video, allowing you to keep both hands on the keyboard at all times. To take advantage of your foot pedal, you’ll need to install Speechpad’s Foot Control software.

There is a timer in the upper right showing the amount of allotted time remaining before you must submit the job. Be sure to keep an eye on the clock so that your job doesn’t expire before you can submit it.

Captioning Console

When a customer requests captions, the video is first transcribed using the transcription console. Our software then automatically divides the text into caption groups with start times and end times. Caption review jobs are then created to ensure that the underlying transcription is correct and that the captions were grouped according to the customer requirements. The captioning console is used to do these types of jobs. It is a sophisticated caption editor that allows you to edit caption content, adjust timing, split or merge caption groups, and more.