Guide: Getting a Tutoring Job for High School Graduates

University of Sydney Medicine

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So you want to make money. But have no qualifications. Or prior experience. And want a good wage.

Well it looks like tutoring is for you!

Hello prospective tutor!

I’m Bob Chen, a James Ruse graduate who was in your shoes not long ago.

The world after highschool is quite hazy. It’s a beautiful blend of the freedom of adulthood and the pleasures of being young (and living at home to avoid rent). But it gets hazier still if you want to make money. After all, you need money to fund all that freedom.

Tutoring is potentially one of the best choices for high achieving high school graduates. It’s:

  • Very well paid — It can even double the minimum wage they pay you in Fast Food Chains and Woolworths/Coles)
 
  • Safe – The possibility of work related injuries is very low because you won’t be doing much manual labor
 
  • Fulfillment – Although it may sound airy fairy, you’ll soon find that being able to have a meaningful impact on the future of a young person makes you feel good compared to packing bags
 
  • Prestigious – It’s a respectable job and you’ll also be able to use that hard earned knowledge and exam skill for something good

Ok, ok, so tutoring sounds like a good idea. How do we get into tutoring? Unfortunately, it’s a highly unregulated market and it’s incredibly messy.

Thankfully, we’ve been down this path for you and mapped it all out here. We’ll present 3 different avenues you can take.

1. Working at a Coaching Centre

It’s common for students to turn to the big coaching centres first for work like Ace, Matrix, Talent etc. After all, they have the biggest presence in the market, so it’s natural to seek out work there. Let us give you a guide on how to get a job there as well as the pros and cons.

How to Get Hired

You have to ask for the job. You need to take the initative to reach out by calling or otherwise to ask if they have any positions. They have plenty of fantastic applicants – they‘re not going to contact you.

If they decide that you have good enough credentials, they’ll call you in for an interview and a teaching demonstration afterwards (where you’ll show how well you can teach). Given the quantity of tutors applying, it can be very competitive. These centers also often only hire students that did tutoring there when they were in high school so it gets harder for outsiders.

Pay

The pay tends to be $20/hr for a smaller company to about $40/hr for a bigger company. There are some very rare exceptions but this is true for almost all companies.

However, for many companies they may also include super in this (such as Ace). This means your effective pay may only be $36/hr not $40.

Pros

  • The materials make it easy to teach – The biggest advantage to working at a company is that you get to use their resources to teach. Their notes and homework have been developed and refined over time. This means you can put in less effort to teach because you have something to leap off of and don’t need to make your own materials (which is quite time consuming).
 
  • Stable – Working at a company generally guarantees you’ll have a class to teach and work to do. Even if you’re not that good at your job, you’ll still have work although students may drop out.
 
  • Prestigious – There’s an undeniable sense of pride of being part of something greater than yourself. You also get to be around like minded coworkers to have a bit of office fun with.

Cons

  •  
  • Relatively Low Pay – The pay tends to be $20/hr for a smaller company to about $40/hr for a bigger company. Whilst this might sound ok, we’ll come to show you how this is far less than what you should be getting, especially considering how big their class sizes (and hence profits) are.
 
  • Hard to get in – The application and interview and teaching demonstration process is hard to pass. You often need state rank credentials or at least very high 90’s in a subject to get accepted for even an interview. Not only that but often you would need to have gone there during your HSC to be an eligible candidate.
 
  • Restricted scope – Some tutoring companies require you to stick extremely strictly to their notes. Even if the notes are wrong in your opinion or you have some genius other method of explaining concepts. Your creative license as a teacher is limited.
 
  • Becoming a cog – Although cliche, it is true that you lose a sense of identity and purpose in a big company as you become yet another cog. I found it was accentuated with the lack of meaningful personal connections with students as it was a big class.

2. Private Tutoring

Private tutoring is where you privately meet up with a student in a one on one class to tutor them. This is an incredibly laissez faire world. It’s like a back street restaurant. It’s really hard to get into/find but inside it’s great.

The key to finding students is having great credentials. These range from the school you go to (the more selective it was the better), your ATAR, any state ranks and your marks in each subject. Having better marks allows you to demand a higher price.

Once you find a student, you often have weekly classes where you can answer their questions or teach them content ahead of school. These can be at your home, their home or at a library.

However, the hardest part, for me at least, was finding students. If you don’t come from a family with lots of connections, it’s really hard to get yourself known. It took me well over half a year to get my first student. Places you can try advertising on are typically Gumtree, but it takes an awful long time before you get any serious responses, even if you have fantastic credentials.

Pay

Extremely broad range from $25 for a really average tutor to $90/hr for state rankers and 99.95s. However, for the distinguished achiever who has a high ATAR, good marks but no state ranks, you can generally charge $45-50/hr.

Pros

  • Good pay – Generally, even if you’re not good enough to get hired as a tutor for a coaching college, you can still find work as a private tutor for a wage that’s higher than that of a coaching college.
 
  • More freedom – Private tutoring allows you to work at any time that pleases you (and your student). The way you teach is also incredibly flexible because there isn’t any authority.
 
  • More fulfilling – You get to form a personal bond with a student that deepens as you understand their dreams and fears. It can be an incredibly rewarding experience to see them not only achieve better marks but to create a meaningful bond with them.

Cons

  • Hard to get started – There’s a reason why people typically go towards big companies for a job. It’s just very hard to know how to get a private tutoring job. Where do I advertise? Where? There are some platforms like Gumtree, but there aren’t many serious customers.
 
  • No training – There’s no training when you get into private tutoring. You don’t know if the teaching method you came up with really works (if you even bothered to come up with one at all :’) ). You have no idea if this is an effective way to teach, because no one is there to teach you how to teach. If the way you teach is bad, your student can leave you like that.
 
  • No resources – Probably one of the worst things about private tutoring is that there is a severe lack of resources to teach with. The best you get is the school’s textbook but these do not guide you how to best explain a concept. Textbook homework is also incredibly simple. You could make your own homework but that’s a lot of effort outside of class. Also, it’s very hard to get good questions too.

3. tutorgum

Wow this guy has no face! It’s a shameless plug! No, no – I promise if I’m willing to put my own name on this, there is a meaningful benefit our company can bring.

I’ve had a lot of experience in the tutoring industry – from working at various coaching centers to doing a lot of private tutoring.

My students have given me incredibly positive reviews, saying that my method of teaching has allowed them to achieve results that conventional tutoring colleges like Ace could never have. The company was created to bring our unique method of teaching to a wider audience to help more students achieve what they deserve.

However, we’re not just here to bring the best to our students but the best to our tutors too.

We structured out company to bring tutors the best of both private tutoring and coaching centers.

Pay

Tutoring Year 11 and below up to: $55/hr*

Tutoring Year 12 up to: $65/hr*

 

Our wages are competitive. We reward talent with good pay. We pay more than Ace, Talent, Project Academy, PEAK, Dux, North Shore, Matrix and almost every other tutoring company per hour (at least by 30% and up to 3x more!)

Pros

  • Good pay – As mentioned above, our pay far exceeds industry standards because that doesn’t make for happy, productive employees.
 
  • Easily find students – We take care of the marketing for you. We’ll find students and match them up with you. You just sit back until we contact you.
 
  • Fulfilling – You can have students who you know intimately and share a special bond as you work through the ups and downs of HSC life.
 
  • Get trained by Experienced Private Tutors in how to teach – You know a lot about physics, chemistry. But probably not about teaching. It’s not one of the syllabus dot points is it.
 
  • Get materials – We’ll provide you with fantastic and detailed teaching notes on the topics you need to deliver for that week. We’ll also give you challenging homework that encourages mental effort. We’ve done the hard work of picking out hard questions so you can enjoy more of your free time outside of class.
 
  • Can tutor online/from home – If we deem you skilled enough, you can begin doing online classes which means you save a lot of traveling time!

Cons

  • Application process – Unfortunately, we also have an application process consisting of a short form you fill in (found below) and followed by an interview stage. However, we promise it’s not that scary and there isn’t much you need to do in preparation! Also, if you’re going for medicine, we promise the signup takes less than 2 minutes and we’ll schedule your interview after your medicine ones.
 
  • Material commission – We take a small amount from the gross total of the lesson out as commission to use our materials. However, it saves you time outside of class preparing the lesson and stress in class of thinking of what to say. Tutors have often said that the trade off is worthwhile.


Want to apply? Click below!

We can’t wait to see you!

 

Whatever route you go down, we wish you the best! We hope you enjoy this blissful time between high school and university and make the most out of it. It can be a time to really discover yourself and do something meaningful (and of course fun)! We hope to see you soon!

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