Being fluent with keyboarding, accurate checking, and working under deadlines can help you earn money. A job in data entry can be your career rather than just a part-time job. It can bring opportunities to different industries, and the data entry specialist salary can be competitive. If you are a newbie to this job, read on!
Table of Contents
Requirements To Become A Data Entry Specialist
A data entry specialist is the one who enters data from different sources into a database to process or retain records. The task that goes along is to verify and clean data if necessary. In the actual context of a data entry job, specialists also perform scanning documents, answering phones, and some other general office tasks.
Qualifications
In general, a data entry specialist position requires at least a high school diploma or general education degree (GED). According to Zippia, nearly one third of data entry specialists have a bachelor’s degree. Based on the level of experience, the requirement for education varies slightly.
Regardless of junior or senior level, a data specialist must be strong in Microsoft Office skills, especially Words and Excel. Besides working with the tools, candidates can be required to have good typing skills to ensure efficiency. Therefore, employers can show the required minimum typing rates as words per minute (WPM) in the job requirement.
Since the job requires accuracy, the ability to notice and focus on details is essential. At the senior level, a data entry specialist will have to supervise their colleagues’ work, so they must have the ability to detect any defection in the data entry.
Besides entering data, a data specialist often takes other general office tasks, so candidates should have the ability to learn how to use office equipment (scanner, photocopier, telephone, etc.) comfortably and efficiently.
Experience
The data entry job requires quick and accurate typing skills. Hence, your experience and familiarity with software and computer operations would help you a lot. Working with office software since high school or earlier is a good start for a data entry specialist. Your experience in previous jobs will help, too. It’s common if the employer requires customer service representative experience for a data entry specialist position. In reality, many data entry specialists have previous experience as administrative assistants or cashiers. Regarding specialized fields such as medical, you should have at least basic knowledge about medical records to work as a medical data entry specialist.
In any type of data entry specialist, employers mainly demand skills that are data entry, computer database, communication, high volume, and computer system. They highly require customer service skills from candidates for a data entry specialist position. In the medical area, medical record skill is a must. Besides entering data, a medical data specialist has to check the data accuracy. Due to the strict requirement related to the medical field, medical data entry salary is one of the highest-paid positions.
2. Types Of Data Entry Specialist
There are two major types of data entry specialists: remote and in-house data entry specialists.
With a remote data entry specialist position, you are free to choose a location to fulfill your tasks as a data entry specialist. You can choose the time to work in a day if the employer allows you to do so. As a result, employers of remote data entry specialists often pay attention to your work performance, so your work experience in the past may not weigh too much. Consequently, the pay rate of remote positions is often based on the project or the amount of work you complete rather than hourly pay.
On the other hand, an in-house data entry specialist has a fixed work location and working time to follow. Despite not having the freedom to choose a working environment, you can expect more benefits besides hourly wage from the employer, such as merit bonuses, health benefits, or paid time off. In general, your data entry job assessment is often based on your productivity, accuracy, and reliability for an in-house position, so your background does matter.
3. Data Entry Specialist Salary
A data entry specialist can earn on average more than 34.1 thousand US dollars per year. The average hourly pay is $16.42, so the payment will be $657/week or $2,846/month.
The range of data entry specialist salaries is from $19,000 to $57,000 per year. The majority of annual salaries vary from $27,000 to $37,500. The top earner in the data entry specialist job makes around $47,000 in the US per year. The wide range of salaries in the data entry specialist job shows opportunities for promotion and advancement for higher wages based on skills, location, and experience level.
Data Entry Specialist In Different Cities
As mentioned above, a data entry specialist can grab the chance to increase the salary by choosing a location where this job is paid more on average. The table below shows the data entry specialist salary variety across different cities in the US. Data jobs in New York City rank first with nearly $40,000 for annual pay, equivalent to $19.17 per hour.
| City | Annual Salary | Monthly Pay | Weekly Pay | Hourly Wage |
| New York City, NY | $39,864 | $3,322 | $767 | $19.17 |
| San Mateo, CA | $39,337 | $3,278 | $756 | $18.91 |
| Boston, MA | $38,071 | $3,173 | $732 | $18.30 |
| Juneau, AK | $38,067 | $3,172 | $732 | $18.30 |
| Berkeley, CA | $37,805 | $3,150 | $727 | $18.18 |
| Daly City, CA | $37,698 | $3,142 | $725 | $18.12 |
| Santa Monica, CA | $37,629 | $3,136 | $724 | $18.09 |
| Quincy, MA | $37,473 | $3,123 | $721 | $18.02 |
| Renton, WA | $37,453 | $3,121 | $720 | $18.01 |
| Mountain View, CA | $37,225 | $3,102 | $716 | $17.90 |
Other cities in the top 10 of salaries for data entry jobs include San Mateo, CA, Boston, MA, Juneau, AK, Berkeley, CA, Daly City, CA, Santa Monica, CA, Quincy, MA, Renton, WA, and Mountain View, CA. All these cities have higher annual pay than the average salary of the data entry specialist job across the US.
The highest average salary for data entry specialist jobs is from Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Whilst Utah, Louisiana, and Idaho are reported to offer the lowest wages for data entry jobs.
Experience Matters On How Much A Data Specialist Make
The data entry specialist salary is influenced by the level of experience as well. The pay varies from junior to senior level. The higher level of experience, the higher wages offered for data entry specialists. Below is the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics about how compensation gets affected by experience level.
4. What Are The Difficulties
Since data entry is a job that can work from home, there are scams to this type of job. Fraudulent offers, promises of high salaries, identity theft, or requests for money can happen.
To avoid these scams, be sure the company you’re applying to is legitimate. You should search for its credible online information, including location, contact details, activities, and workforce.
Before you can confirm it’s a legitimate company, don’t provide any personal information to avoid identity theft. Lastly, don’t pay any fee because a legitimate company will not charge job seekers.
Another difficulty of data entry jobs is low wages. If you are qualified, expand your search for job listings to different locations and employers. Besides, you can work part-time in the data entry job as a supplementary income..
Final Words
All in all, I hope this article can give an overview of this position for any newbies seeking data entry jobs. You can work in-house or from home as a data entry specialist. However, please remember that the internet and other online tools are born to assist our lives, including making money, so let’s use it wisely to get benefits and avoid scams!
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