What the work actually involves

You receive batches of Portuguese audio and produce transcripts that follow a specific client style guide — not your own habits. Depending on the project that can mean verbatim capture of disfluencies, false starts and repetitions; timestamped speaker turns; tagging of overlapping speech, laughter, background noise, or inaudible spans; and consistent handling of numbers, acronyms, foreign words and code-switching into English. A second strand of the work is review: reading someone else's transcript against the audio and deciding what is an error, what is a defensible judgment call, and what needs to be escalated as a guideline gap. Audio quality ranges from clean studio recordings to phone calls and noisy field capture, and speakers may be European, Brazilian, African or diaspora Portuguese.

What the screen is looking for

micro1's screening is AI-led and conversational, usually with a spoken component. Expect it to test native-level comprehension rather than certificates: how you handle a mumbled clause, whether you can describe your own regional variety and which others you can transcribe reliably, and how you'd resolve a homophone or a proper noun you can't verify. Expect follow-up questions that push on specifics — if you say you have transcription experience, be ready to name the conventions, the turnaround expectations and the tools. Guessing at a word and presenting it as certain is the failure mode the screen is built to catch; flagging uncertainty in the format the guide specifies is the behaviour it rewards.

Logistics

  • Fully remote, contractor engagement, invoiced hourly against logged task time.
  • Largely asynchronous — batches come with deadlines rather than fixed shifts — though quality feedback loops with project managers may sit in a particular timezone.
  • Volume is project-driven and can pause between batches; treat it as supplementary rather than guaranteed full-time income.
  • You supply your own setup: reliable internet, a quiet workspace, and good over-ear headphones. Foot pedals and transcription software help but are rarely mandatory.
  • Pay is stated as observed in the $20–36/hr band; actual rate varies with language pair, task complexity and assessed quality tier.