Data Entry

[Georgia Galaxy]

Do any of you have any idea what a job in Data Entry is like? Have you had any experience? My family is considering putting me in the work from home data entry job, which means copying words and typing and stuff.

 

[Outdated]

I did data processing in a marketing company for about a year. I liked the work but hated my boss.

Whether it suits you or not depends a lot on your personality, for me doing that sort of stuff is more like entertainment than work.

 

[Georgia Galaxy]

I did data processing in a marketing company for about a year. I liked the work but hated my boss.

Wether it suits you or not depends a lot on your personality, for me doing that sort of stuff is more like entertainment than work.

Hmm, that's good, that's always a good sign!

 

[Misery]

Probably depends on the exact nature of the job.

I did data entry at a bank (in a separate secured building that the public never gets to enter, which was actually connected to the main building via an underground passage, so that was odd), which mostly consisted of looking at scanned images of checks that appeared on the screen, and typing out what was written on them (if it was legible). There was a LOT of it, so speed was important; I actually came up with a two handed keypad typing method (it was purely numbers that I needed to do) while I was there and was the fastest on the team.

But that job ended up being more than just that, as I also ended up running the check sorters (and did the data entry when neither of them were active). Check sorters are these huge blocky things, you feed a big blob of checks into one end (all at once), and then they shoot through it at warp speed and separate into different slots at the other end.

Or at least that's what they're supposed to do. In reality most of the job was running back and forth responding to the many, many, MANY problems they had. Which ranged from crumpling checks, shredding them, spraying them into the air, and other issues. I'm convinced they were made by drunken monkeys with hammers. Still baffles me to this day that machines that were as important as those to the bank actually running were so erratic.

That hadnt been what I was hired to do, either. The job started as just data entry. But quickly became both that and the sorters, and it kept that way till I left.

The stupid part is, after that job ended (it was a temp thing, lasted a year) I kept trying to get a similar job running sorters at various other banks but nobody seemed to have heard of the things. Always blank stares.

So that was my loopy experience.

I imagine that a home job is likely a lot more laid back, but it definitely will depend on time constraints... how soon they want the results and just how many entries you need to deal with.

My advice is to be very sure that you have a proper setup... good posture, back straight and arms straight, with a good keyboard, so you dont wreck your wrists/arms/whatever. I can promise you, you'll regret it if you end up with an injury due to that. That nonsense comes on unexpectedly, *really* hurts, and may not go away. Carpal tunnel... and similar conditions... are no joke, that's for sure.

 

[Georgia Galaxy]

Probably depends on the exact nature of the job.

I did data entry at a bank (in a separate secured building that the public never gets to enter, which was actually connected to the main building via an underground passage, so that was odd), which mostly consisted of looking at scanned images of checks that appeared on the screen, and typing out what was written on them (if it was legible). There was a LOT of it, so speed was important; I actually came up with a two handed keypad typing method (it was purely numbers that I needed to do) while I was there and was the fastest on the team.

But that job ended up being more than just that, as I also ended up running the check sorters (and did the data entry when neither of them were active). Check sorters are these huge blocky things, you feed a big blob of checks into one end (all at once), and then they shoot through it at warp speed and separate into different slots at the other end.

Or at least that's what they're supposed to do. In reality most of the job was running back and forth responding to the many, many, MANY problems they had. Which ranged from crumpling checks, shredding them, spraying them into the air, and other issues. I'm convinced they were made by drunken monkeys with hammers. Still baffles me to this day that machines that were as important as those to the bank actually running were so erratic.

That hadnt been what I was hired to do, either. The job started as just data entry. But quickly became both that and the sorters, and it kept that way till I left.

The stupid part is, after that job ended (it was a temp thing, lasted a year) I kept trying to get a similar job running sorters at various other banks but nobody seemed to have heard of the things. Always blank stares.

So that was my loopy experience.

I imagine that a home job is likely a lot more laid back, but it definitely will depend on time constraints... how soon they want the results and just how many entries you need to deal with.

My advice is to be very sure that you have a proper setup... good posture, back straight and arms straight, with a good keyboard, so you dont wreck your wrists/arms/whatever. I can promise you, you'll regret it if you end up with an injury due to that. That nonsense comes on unexpectedly, *really* hurts, and may not go away. Carpal tunnel... and similar conditions... are no joke, that's for sure.

Thanks for letting me know. Very interesting insight!

 

[VictorR]

Pure data entry jobs have more or less disappeared from the market where I am as OCR (optical character recognition) capabilities have expanded significantly, and a lot of things that used to be form and letter based have switched to emails and web forms. The ones that remain have often turned into either generic admin roles (which may include things like accounts payable and receivable) or more rarely, mailroom roles (for which some companies now outsource).

Medical is one field where there's still a lot of paper correspondence and as we all know, doctors (as a field in general) are notorious for difficult to decipher handwriting. Medical transcription is a specialized field that often requires training (several months?) to recognize various terms and shorthand.

 

[AO1501]

Do any of you have any idea what a job in Data Entry is like? Have you had any experience? My family is considering putting me in the work from home data entry job, which means copying words and typing and stuff.

I did data entry for a few months when I was first allowed to work in the US, and I enjoyed it. It was for a medical facilities company, transposing questionnaire responses from their clients and users into the company's database for satisfaction survey analysis.

Very repetitive, very keyboarding-centric, and it could easily have been a bit boring. However, I started noticing patterns in the responses - in essence doing on-the-fly analytics, just for self-interest - and that made it quite fascinating. I even volunteered to stay on for a few weeks after I had found a job more suitable for my skills levels (I was in IT management) so that I could see how the whole survey worked out.

If you're pattern-oriented as I am, data entry can be quite rewarding.

 

[tazz]

I did data entry for a couple of years as my first job. I had to enter information from invoices and other bits of paper onto the computer system. I actually quite liked the repetitive nature of it, and the attention to detail. And then each month there were particular tasks that needing doing like running payroll reports. So there was a bit of variety. Also when we had upgrades and changes to the computer system there was usually chance to follow along with the guys that came in to do that work - and actually I learnt a lot from that - taught myself networking and telecommunications skills and eventually ended up in that role, designing and installing networks and servers.

Data entry can also mean more complex tasks such as importing data into databases or spreadsheets, so essentially converting data from one electronic format to another.

 

[Progster]

I once had a temp data entry job. The boss rang the temping agency I was working for and told them that I was doing very well It was very repetitive and rather boring though, I don't think I could have done it for more than about a week.

 

[Georgia Galaxy]

I did data entry for a few months when I was first allowed to work in the US, and I enjoyed it. It was for a medical facilities company, transposing questionnaire responses from their clients and users into the company's database for satisfaction survey analysis.

Very repetitive, very keyboarding-centric, and it could easily have been a bit boring. However, I started noticing patterns in the responses - in essence doing on-the-fly analytics, just for self-interest - and that made it quite fascinating. I even volunteered to stay on for a few weeks after I had found a job more suitable for my skills levels (I was in IT management) so that I could see how the whole survey worked out.

If you're pattern-oriented as I am, data entry can be quite rewarding.

Aww that's really nice, I am actually pretty pattern-oriented ^^ My Mum studied IT in university many years ago, and she practically taught me how to type quickly but I've mostly learned how to use technology all on my own after going on it repetitively ^^