Those who can, do. Those who can teach, make money. Tutoring is a great, flexible job option for a lot of different people: teachers who want a part-time hustle, students who want to put their recent academic or test-taking success to work, subject matter experts who want a side hustle (noticing a theme?), and plenty of others. Tutoring is a big freelance business, and can be a very lucrative one. It’s not your average 9-to-5 job, so it’s important to think of your tutoring resume as a unique document worthy of your time and attention, instead of just emailing the doc of your catch-all resume. And if you are a student or a recent grad looking for a tutoring gig, it might actually be your first brush with resume-ing. Whatever the case may be, we’ve got tips and strategies to get you through the initial writing, and get you tutoring.
Plan before you write your resume.
Think about what job you’ll be applying for, and who will be reading your resume. Will it be a recruiter at an academic or test prep center? If so, you may need to make your resume more inclusive, to cover the variety of topics you’re able to teach. Will it be a client (or client’s parent), deciding whether you’re the one for a private tutoring gig? In-person or online? All of these things can affect the information you present, and what you choose to emphasize.
For example, if you’re applying for a tutoring center, you might want to highlight your years of experience working with dozens of students to raise grades and work on writing skills. If you’re going to be working as a one-on-one tutor, emphasize either your own expertise (perfect SAT score, 4.0 GPA in calculus, etc.) or what you’ve helped others to achieve (your students have raised their SAT scores an average of 200 points). And if you’re going to be an online tutor, you might want to emphasize your strong tech skills in addition to your teaching skills. Tutor jobs are not one-size-fits-all, so make sure your resume fits what you’re trying to achieve.
Start with the basics.
The top of your resume should always be your core information: contact info, including a (professional and respectable) email address. If you have social media that supports your tutoring or teaching, feel free to include it—but only if it’s relevant. Your blog “Josh’s Tutoring Tip of the Day” is a great link to include. The “Josh rants about what happened in the game last night” Twitter feed is not.
Josh Smith
(444) 111-1111
JoshTheTutor@emaildomain.com
Website: JoshsTutorTips.gov
Tweetgram profile: @thetutorguy
With social media comes great responsibility, so if you do choose to include it in your tutoring resume, definitely do the precautionary sweep to make sure that everything is appropriate and professional-looking. This is especially true if you’re planning to work with younger students—if parents look you up and see totally inappropriate partying pictures or a strident political manifesto you wrote back in freshman year, they might think twice about hiring you to work with their kid. And creating a professional brand is a good idea anyway, so having an online portfolio of your teaching and tutoring can be a big asset.
If you have a strength that you really want to see, consider using a headline. This is just a brief one-liner that shows off what you most want the reader to see. For example:
Perfect LSAT-Scorer and Results-Focused Tutor or Math Whiz Who Makes Calculus Easy
Next, show off your education.
Tutoring is an area where it’s okay to brag about your educational bonafides, because you want to show that you’ve got the education and expertise to back up your teaching. The Education section can also help convey a lot of background information about you in a very brief, concise way. Here’s an example of a tutor looking for a job at a writing center that also helps students prepare for standardized tests.
EDUCATION & ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS
State University of California, Bachelor of Arts
Graduating May 2018
Major: English
Overall GPA: 3.8
Major GPA: 4.0
Awards: The 2017 Undergraduate Prize in Writing Excellence
Yosemite High School, Sacramento, CA, High School Diploma
Overall GPA: 3.9
SAT Score: 1580 (800 Verbal, 780 Math)
ACT Score: 36
This is a pretty hefty “Education” section, and includes information that you might not need on a regular professional resume (like test scores and high school GPA). But in this case, it shows that the tutor is high-achieving as a college writer, and also that she performed very well on standardized tests as a student herself—particularly on verbal sections. All of that is information that can help set her apart from other applicants for the tutoring job.
Depending on your own strengths and the information that’s most relevant to the tutoring job you’re seeking, you can pick and choose information to include here—as long as it’s related to your academic career.
Focus on your tutoring experience.
In a regular resume, you wouldn’t necessarily think of breaking your work experience into two sections because you usually want the reader to get a sense of your experience as a whole. In a tutor resume, you should. Why? Because you want the reader to really focus on your specific tutoring qualifications, so those should go front and center. Pull out your directly relevant tutoring, teaching, or subject matter expertise experience first, and then if you have relevant work experience, add an “Other Work Experience” section. For example:
EXPERIENCE
Algebra Tutor Stonecroft High School
March 2015 – present
- Create practice worksheets and quizzes for Algebra I and II students
- Help students raise their algebra grades by an average of 13%
- Tutor students one-on-one and in small groups
General Math Tutor Stonecroft Community Center Homework Helpline
June 2016 – present
- Tutor students between 3rd and 12th grade on general math concepts, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, precalculus, and calculus
- Provide customized one-on-one tutoring for students who attend the Community Center’s afterschool homework help program
OTHER EXPERIENCE
Camp Counselor Happy Day Camp, Smithville, IL
Summer 2016 – Summer 2017
- Manage daily activities for children age 10-12
- Create physical and educational activities for kids of diverse learning abilities
- Host the annual “Math is Magic” variety show for campers
The benefit of breaking up the experience sections here is that the tutor is able to show off the strong tutoring experience he has, while also including other jobs (here, the camp counselor position) that supplement the idea that he is a strong leader and teacher, without that second job distracting from the tutoring expertise.
Pick your skills wisely.
You’re applying for a very specific job, so make sure that any skills you include are laser-focused that job. You may be great at organizing meetings or negotiating tricky disputes between colleagues, but someone reading your resume for a tutoring job needs to know what you bring to the table as a tutor, not necessarily a general employee. If you have subject-specific skills that align with what you’d be teaching, use them here. If you have tech skills that enhance your tutoring, use them here. This is also a good place to list strengths that can help you stand out, like language skills. For example:
KEY SKILLS:
- Multilingual (fluent in English and Spanish, able to speak and write basic Mandarin)
- Illustrating complicated mathematical information and breaking it down to the most essential information
- Proofreading and editing
This tutor may have 15 more skills that make her invaluable as an employee, teacher, or coach. But she chooses to focus on the ones that show value as a tutor hired to teach and review complicated concepts with someone who may not understand right away. And including a note about languages spoken helps broaden her appeal as well, as she’s showing that she can work with students who may feel more comfortable working in Spanish or Mandarin.
Let your expertise shine through.
And…that’s it. One of the key things to remember about your tutoring resume is that it doesn’t have to be a complex beast, with information about everything you’ve ever done. This is especially true if you’re becoming a tutor as a part-time or second job. You want your tutoring resume to be specific to and focused on the tutoring job you want, while showing off the top skills you bring as a tutor. The average resume gets only a few seconds of consideration, so it’s important to make your information pop, and your value clear right away.
