Gaining Industry Knowledge
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There are many ways to learn about this business. Here are our suggestions.
1. Technical information
For technical notary knowledge, your state is the authority. NNA is often a good source of information on notary law, but your state is the final authority. Refer to your handbook regularly so you can be an expert at your state’s notary laws and practices.
2. Industry information
You can learn a lot by reading what people are talking about on Notary discussion groups. Keep in mind that you don’t know how smart or correct some of these Notaries are. Many are seasoned Notaries who know this business inside out while others are a bunch of hostile complainers who are not good Notaries. Don’t take anything you read as gospel, but just as input that might be informative or even useful.
3. Signing Companies
Once again, to learn which signing companies are popular with others, forums and lists of signing companies with reviews as the place to go and 123notary and Notary Rotary have this type of lists with ratings.
http://www.123notary.com/signco.asp
4. Mentors
Many Notaries find a mentor, or someone experienced that they can ask questions to. Carmen at 123notary is very helpful about answering questions by phone and Jeremy answers questions by email. We are here to help. But, you can ask around and try to find a mentor as well. It would be nice if you can reward them for helping them because they deserve something if they are boosting your career.
5. Courses
We discussed courses before in one of the previous chapters. 123notary has free courses right on the blog which are actually almost as good as a paid course. You can learn a lot about loan documents, loan signing, and dealing with real life scenarios in our courses. Visit our blog and look at the categories on the right to find some of our courses and compilations and other sections.
http://blog.123notary.com
6. Real Life Scenarios
Knowing notary and document knowledge is not enough. Knowing how to handle real life snags and situations can save you from court cases and a lot of grief. We have a page on Notary Public 101 in our blog called Real Life Scenarios. I highly recommend this page.
7. Experience
Just by doing a lot of work and keeping your eyes open you can learn a lot about this business. Those Notaries who are like a sponge seem to absorb a lot of knowledge. Those who just know enough to get by seldom learn much.
8. Talk to people who hire you
If you talk to Lenders, Settlement Agents, Escrow Agents, etc., you might learn a lot about this business. You could learn about the Escrow process, recording process, what can go wrong if you put your initial in the wrong place, what can go wrong if you identify someone incorrectly, and more. There is so much to know about this business, and the people who hire you are sometimes a wonderful source of endless knowledge — and sometimes they are unfriendly jerks who won’t tell you anything. But, let’s focus on the positive and you will be surprised how much you can learn.
