Finding a scopist?

Hello!

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scopists available for hire, generally found through the Internet.  But where?

For several years, there were a few online sites offering the services of a scopist, places such as scopists.com or CSR Nation or Depoman (now defunct).  With the popularity of Facebook, I looked around at the various court reporting groups to see where I might find scopists either to hire myself or if I wanted to scope for other reporters.  I joined several of the seemingly more popular Facebook groups related to court reporting, just as a lurker, so to speak, never posting anything.  I wanted to get a feel for what each group offered, the types of things posted, and the general tone of each group.

Some of these groups were what I call "all-purpose" in that they were a mixture of job ads, people advertising their services, jokes, cartoons, and general conversations.  There were a few groups dedicated to a single purpose, such as the CaseCat or Eclipse users' groups, but even those groups contained posts of a general nature.  I specifically looked around and noticed that two of them had listings under the Files section where a few people had posted their scoping and proofreading services.  Hmm ... I began to look all over Facebook to see if I could find a "Job Board" set up as a bulletin board where people could find one another to hire and be hired for court reporting-related employment.

Finding absolutely nothing, I created one on July 4, 2013.  A dedicated Job Board of this type was something brand new to Facebook, and it quickly became very popular.  At the time, I hosted three other Facebook groups, so I had somewhat of a vision in my mind as to how I wanted my Job Board set up.  Always open to suggestions for working out some of the minor details, numerous people began giving input as to their thoughts and ideas, some right on the Board and some via private messages and e-mails.  Many people were eager to help get our new Job Board up and running in short order, with maximum success!

All suggestions were appreciated, but the recurring theme to list all the workers under Files right on my Job Board fit with my own vision and something I had already seen on two other sites, so I knew this is where I wanted the lists.  Now, the tweaking of those lists and deciding whether to allow reporting or scoping students to list, people who wanted to learn but had no paid experience, people who wanted to mentor others, and so forth, went through a few experimental phases until I made some final decisions on the lists.

But court reporters now have a central location with thousands of members where they can easily find good scopists, proofreaders, and transcriptionists.  In addition, court reporters can find listings of job opportunities for reporting work around the country, as well as businesses who come to my Job Board and hire transcriptionists and others for both short-term and long-term assignments.

If you are interested in joining my Job Board on Facebook, you may request to join by using this link:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/520512311347167/

Until next time ...