Admin, data capture and call centre adverts often state a typing speed, and where they do it is a hard filter: you either meet it or the application stops. Two finger typing tops out well below what those adverts ask for, no matter how long you have been doing it.
These are real requirements from jobs posted on Nasi Ispani.
- Entry level posts at the Office of the Chief Justice: minimum 35 words a minute
- A remote data entry clerk post: around 50 words a minute or faster
- An admin post at a tuition centre: at least 45 words a minute
Somebody typing with two fingers and looking at the keys usually lands somewhere around 20 to 25 words a minute, and hits a ceiling there no matter how much practice they do. The ceiling is not effort. It is the method.
What employers actually test. Usually a short timed passage on a computer, sometimes in the interview itself, sometimes as an online test before it. They look at two numbers: how fast, and how accurate. Many care more about the second, because a fast typist making errors in an ID number or a bank account costs more than a slower one who gets it right.
This course is seven short lessons. It will not make you fast in a week. It will change the method, and the method is what raises the ceiling.
You can type 22 words a minute with two fingers, looking at the keyboard. A job asks for 35.
What happens: This is the trap. Two finger typing has a ceiling because your eyes have to leave the screen to find every key, and no amount of practice removes that step. People stay at roughly the same speed for years.
What happens: Correct, and it is genuinely uncomfortable. Learning to keep your hands in place and your eyes on the screen makes you slower at first. That dip is the whole reason most people never get past 25, and it lasts days, not months.
Is typing speed really used to reject people?
Where the advert states a number, yes, and it is one of the easiest things for an employer to check. It is also one of the few requirements you can fully control. You cannot give yourself three years of experience in a month. You can move from 20 to 40 words a minute in a month.
I only have a phone. Is this course useless to me?
No, but be clear about what it is for. This is about a physical keyboard, which is what the test and the job will use. Lesson 6 covers where to find a keyboard if you do not own one, and Phone Skills lesson 6 covers typing faster on a phone, which is a different skill worth having as well.
Before you move on
- Look up the typing speed on adverts you are applying for
- Accept that you will be slower before you are faster
- Read one advert today and note the number it asks for
Check what you know
4 questions. Have a look at what this lesson asks.
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