Is a medical transcription career right for you

Many people think they can get into the medical transcription industry easily, make good money and live happily ever after. Surely you’ve seen this type of message before with people selling correspondence courses. Can you really make a good living with medical transcription? In this article, we’ll go into the good and the bad of the medical transcription industry and see if itz’s for you or not. Medical transcription is a challenging and rewarding career and the demand for it just keeps growing. there are more than enough jobs out there for anyone willing to make a career in medical transcription. But many people come into this line of work and think they can make a career out of it just because the demand is high. Then they start going through the process and find that it's a lot harder than they anticipated. They thought it would be an easy way to make good money . It is a way to make money, but with anything worth something, it’s not always easy. One of the drawbacks of medical transcription is that it takes training and continuing education. This alone scares many would-be medical transcriptionists away from the field. It takes dedication and a willingness to learn and keep learning. At some point you have to ask yourself “If the demand is high and the supply of medical transcriptionists are low, why isn’t everyone getting into this?”. This is the very reason. It’s not easy. It’s rewarding, but it’s not easy. Usually, it takes six months to get a handle on the medical terminology and the different medical conditions, drugs, procedures, tests, and treatments that are required by the field. Another hurdle is the fact that the medical industry is constantly advancing and constantly changing. Being able to adapt to new medical treatments, drugs and terminology is imperative to your success with medical transcription. There are mail order medical transcription courses out there and many professionals indorse them, but it’s best to go the "hands on " route while learning medical transcription. On the job training or a college teaching it in your area would be the best way to learn. You can get the much needed hands on experience that you can’t get with a correspondence course. While a mail order course may be helpful, it doesn't take the place of a live human being helping you learn the basics and beyond. Medical transcription clearly isn’t for everybody. If you’re serious about earning a good living with a high income career, you should take a close look at it.

Legal assistants and paralegals the future is bright

One of most common ways to become a legal assistant or paralegal is through a community college program that leads to an associate's degree. Another common route; primarily for those who already have a college degree, is through a program that leads to a certification in paralegal studies. Many legal assistants and paralegals have associate degrees in paralegal studies or a bachelor's degree paired with a certificate in paralegal studies. Currently, a small number of schools offer bachelors' or masters' degrees in paralegal studies. A few employers train paralegals on the job, hiring college graduates with no legal experience or promoting experienced legal secretaries. Others have gained experience in a technical field useful to law firms, like tax preparation for tax and estate planning, criminal justice, nursing or health administration for personal injury practice. With 250+ paralegal programs approved by the American Bar Association (ABA) and an estimated 1,000 colleges and universities, law schools and proprietary schools offering formal paralegal training programs - the field is highly represented. Although many programs don't require ABA approval, graduating from an ABA-approved program can enhance one's employment opportunities - it's a credibility thing for some employers. Program admission requirements vary greatly - from a few college credits or courses to a bachelor's degree for others, to high school graduates, those with legal experience, passing a standardized test, to simply having a favorable personal interview. Many legal assistant and paralegal programs include 2-year associate degree programs, 4-year bachelor degree programs and certificate programs that can take as little as a few months to complete. Most certificate programs provide intensive and specialized paralegal training for individuals who already hold college degrees. On the other hand, associate and bachelor degree programs usually combine paralegal training with courses in other academic subjects. Obviously, the quality of paralegal training programs can vary with the higher quality programs usually including job placement services. Courses range from introducing students to the legal applications of computers, including how to perform legal research on the Internet to more and more paralegal training programs offering internships to assist students in gaining practical experience by working for several months in the real world. Internships could be with a private law firm, the office of a public defender or attorney general, a bank, a corporate legal department, a legal aid organization or a government agency. Clearly, the experience gained is an asset when one is seeking a job after graduation and for many can lead to a job with the company they interned with. Most employers don't require certification but earning a voluntary certificate from a professional society does have its advantages when it comes to finding a job. The National Association of Legal Assistants (NALA) has established standards for certification that requires various combinations of education and experience. Paralegals who meet their standards are eligible to take a 2-day examination, offered three times a year at one of several regional testing centers. Those who pass can then use the Certified Legal Assistant (CLA) designation. NALA also offers an advanced paralegal certification for those who want to specialize in specific areas of the law. The Paralegal Advanced Competency Exam offers professional recognition to legal assistants and paralegals that have earned a bachelor's degree and have at least 2 years of experience. Once they pass this test they can use the Registered Paralegal (RP) designation. Legal assistants and paralegals must have the ability to document and present their findings and opinions to their supervising attorneys. They also need to understand legal terminology, have good research and investigative skills and be able to do legal research using a computer and the internet. They also need to stay abreast of new developments in the laws that affect their area of expertise. The most common way many legal assistants and paralegals expand their knowledge is by participating in continuing legal education seminars. Because legal assistants and paralegals deal with the public on an ongoing basis they need to be "shining examples" of ethical standards for the legal profession. The National Association of Legal Assistants, the National Federation of Paralegal Associations and a few States have established ethical guidelines for them to follow. Employment Outlook Legal assistants and paralegals held about 224,000 jobs in 2004 with about 70% being employed by private law firms; most of the remainder worked for corporate legal departments and various levels of government. Within the Federal Government, the U. S. Department of Justice is the largest employer, followed by the Social Security Administration and the U. S. Department of the Treasury. A small number of paralegals own their own businesses and work as freelance legal assistants, contracting their services to attorneys or corporate legal departments. As a whole, employment in this field is projected to grow much faster than average. The current trend of employers trying to reduce costs by hiring paralegals to perform duties formerly carried out by lawyers is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. As a result, employment opportunities are projected to grow much faster than average for the next 10 years or so. As in all fields, compensation varies greatly due to the high number of variables but in general, salaries depend on education, training, experience, the type and size of employer and the geographic location of the job. As a whole, legal assistants and paralegals who work for large law firms or in large metropolitan areas earn more than those who work for smaller firms or in less populated regions. In addition to salary, many also receive bonuses. In mid 2004, the average salary for all legal assistants or paralegal was a tad over $39,000 per year. This article may be reproduced only in its entirety.

Unemployment blues are we pre programmed to be productive

Toiling away at our daily grind, we dream of running away to Hawaii or the South Pacific where we can lie on the beach and do absolutely nothing. Some of us are lucky enough to take a vacation there and temporarily cut ourselves off from the world of responsibilities and demands and worries. We breathe easier, sleep deeper, eat more heartily. It is truly paradise. It's wonderful because we have a life waiting to be reclaimed when we step off the plane. Our job is waiting for us and we go back to work with renewed energy and zest from our long overdue break. It is like the first few days of unemployment, that honeymoon period when we find ourselves with extra time on our hands and no reason to get up early or fight the rush hour traffic. But honeymoons are not designed to last forever and it is only when they are over, that reality and the hard work of building a marriage starts. The obvious stressors of unemployment are widely recognized: financial strains, the drudgery and frequent humiliation of job search, the family disruption, the loss of self-confidence and self-esteem. While none of these can be lightly dismissed, we are going to concentrate for a moment on an area that is often overlooked. It can cause inner turmoil, pain, significantly increase the emotional fallout of layoff, and exacerbate the depression, anxiety, and negative self-view that so often follow. To feel productive seems to be an inherent human need. We feel good about ourselves when we are contributing -- to our own independence, to our family, to our community. Many of the great discoveries, inventions, and explorations of history were made by individuals born to family wealth who had no need to ever lift a finger to ensure adequate self-support. Yet these individuals wanted to contribute to the world in some way and left their homes, worked through the night, and even died trying to be part of some enterprise. Those who sat back on their laurels, and never found any venture to engage them, lead empty lives, drifting through their days without personal value or commitment. Today we see their empty faces in the society pages and read the tabloids to hear about their drug problems and their tawdry efforts to find excitement and meaning. Those of us - most of us - who have no choice but to work, dream of having enough money to have a choice. Few of us really want to drift around the world without goals or ambition. We simply want to do something meaningful to us rather than the career we fell into which has long since lost its charm and excitement. It is when that career, boring and humdrum though it may be, is suddenly taken away, that we realize how much of ourselves is invested in the role we have worn for so long. Our belief in our own value is tied up and interdependent with our productivity. We feel a vital part of our marital partnership, someone our children respect and follow, an important person in our community who has earned the right to voice an opinion or vote for a principle. We bear ourselves with a certain pride in that we are bonafide members of the working class and clearly differentiate ourselves from those who fail to contribute: the welfare class, the criminals, the idle rich, the various parasites who dot the fringes of our society. When we lose our job, the lines start to blur. Our sense of personal importance starts slowly to fracture. We see the reflection of ourselves in the eyes of our friends and family start to change. While we concentrate on finding other work and jumping through the multiple hoops required by any job search campaign, we also withdraw more and more into ourselves, seeking to escape the new image of ourselves emerging in the minds of those around us. As a vocational counselor, I heard a repeated litany of concerns from spouses and family: "Since this happened, she's totally changed . . . He's not the man I knew . . . I don't know who she is anymore . . . he won't talk to me about what's bothering him . . . I want my husband back. I don't care if he's working or not . . ." Have you, or someone you love, fallen into this trap? Address the problem now, before a situation not of your choice and for which you bear no blame, mushrooms into the too frequent personal devastation of the unemployed - broken marriages, family dispersion, substance abuse, shattered lives. The discomfort and emotional pain of losing your job also provides an opportunity to cement bonds and build strength if you take action to address problems head on. Above all, communication must not lapse. In fact, it needs to be expanded and enriched. Reach out to family and friends, those who love you as you are, "warts and all" as the saying goes. Express your fears and your worries. Let them know how uncomfortable you are and how disappointed you feel that you cannot contribute to the family in the way you always managed in the past. Seek out ways to be a productive, even if non-working, member of the team. Take on new chores and responsibilities around the house and with the kids. Pay extra attention to your spouse. You may not be able to afford presents or a night on the town, but you can give of your time and your appreciation, gifts more valuable than anything you could buy at a store. Share the rigors and discouragement of your job hunting efforts. Those who love you want to share in your failures as well as your successes. Encourage them to share their own feelings and fears about your plight, and express their anxieties about the future. Not only do we tend not to express our deepest fears, we also tend not to consciously formulate and define them. They just sit at the back of our minds as a faceless, nagging worry. When we fail to bring them out into the open, where they can be clearly defined and therefore contained, we live in a constant state of unease. To comfort ourselves, we look for something or someone to blame: "Everything was fine until she lost her job . . . if he hadn't got laid off, I'd be registering for college this year . . ." It is an easy slide from such vague thoughts to full-fledged blame and you become the scapegoat on which all problems can be hung. If you are newly unemployed, take steps now to ensure that such a direction is avoided. If you have been out of work for a considerable period of time, and may have already seen this pattern develop, take the time to stop it in its tracks. Redirect your energies into developing a positive team spirit in which all can have a voice and a contribution. It can turn the destructive nature of unemployment into a lightning rod of family cohesion, strength, and deepened affection.

10 Career change myths

: Career Myth #1: You can't make a living doing something you really, truly love This is the grand-daddy of career myths, the belief that you can't have a "practical" career doing something that you were passionate about. It has to be one or the other. This myth is rooted in fear. Fear that we have to sacrifice our happiness to make a living. Don't buy the myth that you can't earn a living by doing what you love. When I first started coaching, I heard from plenty of people that it would be very difficult to make a living doing this work. I just decided to find coaches who were successful, and to learn from them (simple, eh?). If you find yourself buying into this myth, consider this question - As you look back on your life, what will you regret more? Following your passion or following your fears? Career Myth #2: It's a tough job market/economy Even when the newspapers and other news sources say that unemployment numbers remain steady, that job growth is at a standstill, or that we're experiencing slow economic recovery, not to mention downsizing and outsourcing, don't believe it. It's a myth because it doesn't reflect the whole story, the fact that that it's a different job market today. It's a changing economy. How we transition from job-to-job is different. Hiring practices have shifted. So the job market has changed, but that doesn't necessarily make it tougher. What makes it tougher is that we've been slower to change. We've held on to old practices and old behaviors. That's not to say that old ways still don't work, but they're just not as effective. So I challenge you to just believe that it's a perfect job market for you to find work. I've had my college students try this, just for a week, and, more times than not, several of them find job leads or make important connections during the week. Career Myth #3: Changing careers is risky What's riskier than leaving what you know to pursue the unknown? Changing careers means leaving behind a piece of your identity - your "I'm a lawyer" response to the "what-do-you-do?" question. It might mean admitting to yourself that you made a mistake with an initial career choice. Or it might mean acknowledging that you're unsure of what's next. And smart people always know what's next, right? Nope. Successful career changers often don't have a plan. In Working Identity: How Successful Career Changers Turn Fantasy into Reality by Herminia Ibarra, she provided evidence that waiting until you have a plan is actually riskier than just doing and experimenting. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is riskier than not changing careers if you're longing to do so. Here's why: The longing won't go away. It will always be there, under the surface, waiting for you to do something about it. Career Myth #4: Always have a back-up plan Sometimes having a back-up plan is the smart and prudent course of action. Back-up plans are so grown-up and responsible. But what happens when you're standing with one foot in and one foot out? In my experience, we usually close the door and retreat. We are reluctant to commit to ourselves, and we end up denying ourselves the satisfaction of playing full-out, getting dirty and sweaty. We end up with feelings of regret and the nagging "What if?" question. Back-up plans diffuse our energy. Diffused energy equals diffused results. Give all that you've got to your dream/passion/risk and you've got a better chance of being successful. Career Myth #5: There's a perfect job out there for everyone How long have you been searching for yours? You just know, deep inside, that there's an ideal job that's perfect for you out there. It matches your personality, skills, and interests to a tee. And it pays well. If only you could figure it out. If only you knew what it was. Is there a perfect job out there for you? No. And here's the good news - there are more jobs than you can imagine that would be "perfect" for you. Chances are you've even come very, very close to a few of those perfect jobs already. So what happened? And how do you recognize one of these so-called "perfect jobs"? Ever see the perfect gift for someone, but it was months till his or her birthday? Then when you go to find the item later, you can't. Another lost opportunity and you, once again, berate yourself for not buying it when you first saw it. So maybe you've run into a perfect job in the past, but because of the timing, you passed by the opportunity. Or maybe you were so focused on something else, that you missed an obvious clue. Instead of dwelling on the past, which you can't change, vow to keep your eyes open and to look beyond the obvious. Career Myth #6: Asking "What's the best thing for me to do?" is the right question This is one of the most common questions asked when considering a career change or a career move. It seems like a logical analysis - weigh the pros and cons and evaluate the balance. Do not ask yourself this question!! It rarely leads you to the answers you're seeking. It will lead you to feeling overwhelmed with options (sound familiar?), or feeling like you have to choose what's practical over what seems to be impractical. The question that will lead you to answers is simple (but not easy!!) It is "What do I really want to do?" This is a very different question than "what's best?" Career Myth #7: If you don't like your job, you're probably in the wrong career Cause and effect, right? One way to tell if you're in the right career is whether or not you like your job. If you're dissatisfied with your job, it's probably a sign that you need to re-examine your whole career choice. This is frequently what I hear from new clients who have decided to work with a career coach. They know something isn't right because they don't like their jobs. Their natural assumption is that their dissatisfaction is a symptom of a larger underlying issue - their career choice. This is an example of false logic. Not liking your job might be telling you you're in the wrong job. It doesn't necessarily mean you're in the wrong career. It doesn't even mean you're in the wrong job. You could just be working for the wrong person or the wrong company. It takes a skillful approach to discern the source of discontent, and I think it's very hard to do it on your own (shameless plug for career coaches here!) Career Myth #8: Everyone needs a mission statement Do you know what your mission is? Mission statements are supposed to guide us, keep us on track, and help us move forward. But what if you don't have one? Does that mean you're destined to never fulfill your potential career-wise? A client who was a successful professional contacted me because she was at a career crossroads. She felt that if only she could find her mission in life, she would know which career path to take. She had a clear goal for coaching - find her mission! Instead, the most amazing thing happened. She decided that she didn't need a mission. She chose to trust that she was already fulfilling her mission statement, even though she didn't know what it was. After the client shifted her focus from finding her mission to living her life, an amazing opportunity came her way and she pursued it. Here's a little tip: If your mission statement is elusive, stop chasing it. Be still and let it find you. And in the meantime, keep living your life and see what happens. Career Myth #9: Expect a career epiphany When you see a link to "Find Your Dream Job," do you immediately click on it to see what's there? Do you look at every "Top Ten Career" list out there to see if anything catches your interest? Do you know your MBTI type? If you do, you might be falling prey to the career epiphany myth. I'd love, love, love it if most of my clients had a career epiphany that indicated to them, in crystal-clear terms, their next step. Instead, I see career "unfoldings" or a journey of discovery much more regularly. That is, being willing to not ignore the obvious, the pokes, the prods, and listen carefully to the whisper within. Yep, forget harp music and angels, for most of us, the career epiphany is a quiet whisper. Career Myth #10: Ignoring your career dissatisfaction will make it go away Oh, if only this worked in the long run!! Granted, it does work at first. When you find yourself beginning to question your career, you'll find it's rather easy to push the thoughts aside and pretend they aren't there. You know what I'm talking about: the "what ifs" and the list of regrets. Over time, the random thoughts become nagging thoughts. You spend more and more time daydreaming about options. You build your list of reasons to ignore your growing career dissatisfaction:

• You're too old.


• You don't want to take a pay cut.


• You don't want to go back to school.


• You missed your opportunity 5, 10, 15 years ago.

With clients in this situation, we work on identifying and challenging these fears. Sometimes the fear of change remains, but there becomes a greater commitment to living than to feeling the fear. Challenge So now that you know that one or all of these myths have been holding you back, what are you waiting for?

Flight attendant hiring outlook

: The hiring outlook for flight attendants has brightened considerably over the past few months. Led by United Airlines’ recent announcement that they would immediately begin to hire up to 2000 new flight attendants, this news has sparked the most attention. If you are interested in becoming a flight attendant, the market is the best it has been in five years. Let’s take a look at who is hiring or who can be expected to hire over the next year. Legacy Carriers – Beaten up by high employee costs, surging fuel prices, competition from low priced carriers, and overall inefficiency, two legacy carriers [defined as those air carriers who have helped shape the US airline industry] are turning the corner and are hiring flight attendants. United Airlines and Continental Airlines are hiring for various bases within the US. Discount Carriers – Southwest, AirTran, Mesa, and Alaska Airlines are all hiring right now. In fact, across the board hiring is taking place at virtually all discounters right now as they seek to strengthen their footing in the marketplace. Regional Carriers – Chautauqua, Comair, Champion Air, and Air Wisconsin are all hiring. Like the discount carriers, most regional carriers are awash in cash and are expanding their routes. More routes means additional employees needed to fill the increased capacity.

Charter Carriers – Air Miami and several other airlines that fly unscheduled flights are hiring. Start Up Carriers – The two newest air carriers, EOS Airlines and Maxjet Airways, have recently hired flight attendants and are expected to hire again. So, if winging your way to Peoria or Paris is the kind of lifestyle you want to lead, then working as a flight attendant is certainly one of the ways to do just that. Air carriers are hiring and the pickings are good for the right candidates. Contact your desired airline directly for up to date hiring information and open houses.