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Topic: Funky editing freelance project?
| Author | Message |
| wordup | Posted – 6/15/2007 10:44:33 AM | show profile CallStreet: Does anyone have experience with this organization? I listened to a conference call for a freelance editing position and am about to take the test they require. It's a financial organization that transcribes financial earnings calls verbatim and then sells the information to other financial firms. On the call, they were very clear about compensation ($20-35/hr) and how the work would be judged. It is of course very tedious work, but for 20-30 hours a week at most, not too bad. They also had a Q&A in which we could all participate, which was a nice touch. I have a financial journalism background which I would hope would help, but I am wondering if this is worth it. I've been burned many times with different freelance projects so I'm a little dubious about putting the time in to pursue this. |
| adeleh. | Posted – 7/9/2007 12:45:30 PM | show profile Callstreet Hi word, I have similar questions about this company, and a few insights of my own. E-mail me off the board if you would like to talk about it. Adele |
| adeleh. | Posted – 7/9/2007 12:50:17 PM | show profile | email poster oops! disabled my e-mail option! sorry... |
| adeleh. | Posted – 7/9/2007 12:50:25 PM | show profile | email poster oops! disabled my e-mail option! sorry... |
| trek790 | Posted – 7/17/2007 12:25:09 AM | show profile | email poster CallStreet I've just finished a call with them; right now just surfing the Web to see if I can find out any more info about them. So far, there is this post and someone else's post. I don't think it's really possilbe to earn the high point of their rates and during earnings season they will require you to work at least 30 hrs a week. Anyway, feel free to email me! |
| fake.it.til.you.make.it | Posted – 7/17/2007 8:13:22 AM | show profile Don't know much about the company, but I always see that they're looking for someone to fill the position every few weeks, which can't be a good sign. |
| pespi | Posted – 7/21/2007 7:18:04 PM | show profile | email poster Funky editing freelance project? Funky is a good word for their formula. I would be curious to find out if the original poster went on to do the test. I may have been on one of the same conference calls, given the date of this question. I decided not to go forward after the test calls because the pay formula didn't work out for me. Compensation is based on a formula that takes into account errors, turnaround time and other factors. |
| trek790 | Posted – 8/28/2007 9:27:18 AM | show profile | email poster Well, it's been a month now. Went on to work for them and still am, sort of. Earnings season calls are numerous to say the least but, when it is past earnings season, you can forget about any meaningful amount of work. Of course, in three months they will be begging you to take on more calls when earnings season rolls around again. To some extent, it's a bit humiliating because you're sitting around and asking them if they have any sort of work and this goes on day after day. You do not know if there will be any sort of work ahead of time unless you've proven yourself and I don't know when that will be, if ever. Communication is not this company's forte. As for pay, the best that I made during the past month was about $23 an hr for one call which lasted for just a bit over three hrs and the worse was around $3 an hr for a call that lasted well over nine hrs. My average pay worked out to around $7.50 an hr. Their formula penalizes you for taking too much time and for every error that you make or let slip through. If you get a call that's been poorly transcribed you are in for a world of hurt. So, is CS a good gig? Well, let's just say that I'm going to keep looking at this point. |
| adeleh. | Posted – 8/28/2007 12:33:03 PM | show profile Been there, done that Yeah, I have pretty much come to the conclusion that it is a racket. I did about a month's worth of work for them and my hourly pay boiled down to around $6-$7. The calls were brutal, and the poorly transcribed ones took anywhere from 6-9 hours to complete. I think my time (and that of any writer/editor worth their salt) is best spent on other projects. |
| Lswe704 | Posted – 9/4/2007 4:59:50 PM | show profile I've worked for them for over a year... I'm a publisher for them, but started as an editor and still do some editing, especially during the earnings season when everyone is overloaded. It's true that it is a very cyclical job; you couldn't rely on it as your sole income. However, if you do a good job for them, it can pay very well during the earnings season. My monthly paychecks have ranged anywhere between a few hundred and about $2500. It is a tough job to do well at. You must be very picky about your English grammar and spelling, well-versed in financial terms, plus knowledgable about the industries you edit transcripts in in order to be able to do the job as quickly as is necessary to be paid well. I am not their typical employee; I'm over 50, with degrees in engineering as well as business. I own a business and am a single mom with two teenagers; this was one of the few things I've found that I could do from home during my "spare" time, as well as from work. I've never had trouble getting paid, as I've read about on another forum. The checks for each month always arrive by the middle of the following month, and are preceded by an email detailing how the total was computed, so I can compare with my records to make sure they agree. It definitely helps to "get to know" those who are handing out the work, as much as is possible over the Internet. |
| sophiesMOM | Posted – 9/6/2007 12:18:29 PM | show profile | email poster I've looked into this company....v. boring/tedius work and the pay is often not much more than minimum wage...even the high end of $23-$25 an hour isn't that great. i pay my cleaning lady $20. |
| sophiesMOM | Posted – 9/6/2007 12:18:51 PM | show profile | email poster I've looked into this company....v. boring/tedius work and the pay is often not much more than minimum wage...even the high end of $23-$25 an hour isn't that great. i pay my cleaning lady $20. |
| trek790 | Posted – 10/2/2007 9:30:35 AM | show profile | email poster Just a short update to balance out my earlier post. I received my pay for August in the middle of September and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that the amount was about double that of my July pay on a per-hour basis. I will echo what others have said; it is extremely cyclical work so you have to make hay while the sun shines, you have to be very detail-oriented and you have to watch the time allotted to your calls. I think that the latter is what really helped to pull up my pay for August. It does help if you have a background in whatever field the call involves but this is not necessary. In my case, I have absolutely no background in pharmaceuticals but I seem to do well with them and am favoured for those calls. Do not depend on CS for anything other than as a supplement to whatever other source(s) of income you have. I'd drop CS in a heartbeat if my other projects pan out. |
| catherine13 | Posted – 10/5/2007 4:37:59 PM | show profile | email poster CallStreet editing advice Hello everyone I think I too am about to start down this path. Does anybody have any specific advice about how to increase your hourly rate of pay? Or general advice about this job? Much appreciated! |
| ISR | Posted – 10/7/2007 9:00:20 AM | show profile You have to decide you simply won't take less and just don't cave. I found out my $30/hr was a rip-off (vs the $70/hr others were getting at the same CN company), and then decided I wouldn't work for anyone else again for under a certain amount, and have turned things down, or simply asked for more. I'd start at $50/hour. |
| Sandy2008 | Posted – 1/26/2008 5:34:38 PM | show profile | email poster Callstreet I just started working for CallStreet. It seemed frustrating-- much time spent to get a near-perfect transcript. They are not giving me hints on how to speed up the work, which I'm surprised about because it seems it would benefit them. I'd especially like to hear from the person who posted a response, who is over 50 (I am also) with kids (me too) and an engineering degree (me too!!). I really wanted supplemental, work from home, income. I thought I was picky, good with grammer, and reasonably fast at typing. And my technical background would help-- seems to with the semiconductor companies. Will it get better as time goes on? Thank you. |
| rthelightning | Posted – 1/28/2008 3:44:17 AM | show profile | email poster CallStreet editing hey, i'm quite familiar with the work this company does....as was said above, this work is all about making hay while the sun shines. Most of the work comes during the earning season..i.e. once every three months..... I have found that the more you edit, the more familar you get with the industry terms being spoken about in these conference calls. Gradually, your speed also improves.. which is very important as the value of a transript depends on the speed of its availability. But before you get into this kind of work, you need to make sure that you have a decent typing speed. The biggest risk about this work is getting a raw transcript which is of a really bad quality. You'll might literally end up typing the entire event....... feel free to email me Steve |
| glennandroberta | Posted – 4/4/2008 12:34:16 PM | show profile | email poster Be careful I finished working with callstreet after a couple of months as the work turned out to border on the torturous, and the pay scale very punishing (just try and do a poorly transcribed foreign call and see how impossible it is to make a decent wage). Having decided to pursue other options, I waited for my last pay check, which was $50 short. After ten unanswered e-mails, and frequent haranguing via AIM, I am still unable to get an answer to when I will receive the proper paycheck, or if they have even acknowledged that they made a mistake. It's now early April; this was for a call I did on the 1st of February. All I can say is be very careful about working for them -- as another poster says, they are pretty much constantly advertising for new people, which is never a good sign. |
| RKReinert | Posted – 4/13/2008 2:30:40 AM | show profile More on Funky freelance project Well, I went down the road, right up to sending in the test, which is required as part of the application. I should have listened to some of you in this forum. What is an acceptable edited transcript for this firm curls my insides. If one is used to doing professional editing work, this kind of approach will result in bad performance on other jobs. There really are no conventions to speak of. Forget commas and other necessary parts of editing. It's a free-for-all as far as editing goes. Any job that takes off time because of errors is a job to avoid, especially when what is not considered an error is, in editing terms, an error. |
| kyhutch1 | Posted – 4/23/2008 10:54:50 PM | show profile | email poster If it walks & talks like a scam... ...it probably is. There's a sucker born every minute, and CallStreet has apparently figured this out. Luckily, I discovered this after losing only several hours of my life in their employ rather than weeks or months like others. $25-$35 an hour listening to recordings at home sounded like easy money. After doing an uncompensated "test" call (which took me about 3 hours!) and 2 training calls, there were too many red flags. They have this deliberately confusing, complex and penalizing pay formula that you have to be a calculus professor to figure out. What it amounts to is a way for them to get hours of work out of people at a low cost to them. They dock you for fake "errors" in your transcript that aren't really errors. I'm sure they burn through editors at a tremendous rate and have to constantly recruit and train. Maybe as some others have said, it is possible to eventually make decent money with them after getting quicker and better at it, but who needs that aggravation? Somebody should probably file a complaint with the N.Y. AG's office or other appropriate agency (if they haven't already), because Callstreet shouldn't be allowed to advertise a pay rate of $25-$35 an hour when it appears that rate rarely if ever applies. |
| penncalicoll | Posted – 4/30/2008 3:44:47 PM | show profile CallStreet a Scam I completed the first transcription test and passed, and then went on to do two more training calls. I have several years experience with editing and a couple years with medical transcription, and I can assure you this company is not playing it straight. The $25-35 pay rate probably applies to about 1% of editors, which gives them the ability to advertise that rate. However, I am pretty sure that my rate will come out to about $12, if that. I expect to be paid in about a month, which itself is a bit of a red flag. My advice to anyone considering working with this company is to not waste your time. |
