Questions to Ask When Hiring an Associate Tutor

Interviewing your potential associate tutors can be a demanding process for anyone. That’s why we have you covered with essential questions to ask during the interview.

When you’re expanding your tutoring business, you might consider hiring an associate tutor to share the workload and to service more clients.

Like hiring any prospective employee, tutors need to know that an associate tutor has the required skills and competence to effectively teach and manage your students. After all, in addition to considering their own reputations, associate tutors have to uphold yours first and foremost.

Prospective associate tutors should satisfy three key criteria:

• Experience: Does your associate tutor have any experience working with students? If not, do they have any related sort of experience, like working directly with clients to provide a service?

• Drive: Why does your associate tutor want to be an educator? What motivates their interest? Are they serious about the practice and responsibilities of tutoring?

• Goals: What are your associate tutor’s aspirations? Do they want to work for someone else or as part of a group, or are they interested in eventually becoming an independent solo educator?

Knowing about your potential associate tutor’s experience, drive, and goals are essential to your making the right hiring call. Equally as important, however, is giving your candidates a clear idea of your own experience, drive, and goals. It’s a good idea to start the interview by talking briefly about those qualities.

Once you’ve winnowed down the applicant pool and reached the interview stage, here are essential questions that every tutor should ask their prospective associate tutors:

Their Experience

• Do you have any experience in education? If so, ask them to elaborate on their professional or volunteer background.
• What subjects are you interested / knowledgeable in?
• What strengths can you bring to tutoring? (A possible follow up is to ask if they can identify any weaknesses that they’d like to work on.)
• If you don’t know the answer to a student’s question, what steps will you take?
• (If they have prior educational experience) Can you give an example of a successful outcome with a student?

Their Drive

• What interests you about being an independent educator?
• Do you have a motivating education philosophy or (for the more experienced educator) pedagogy?
• How would you motivate your student?

Their Goals

• How many hours do you ideally expect to work?
• What kind of tutoring practice do you want to build?
• Where do you see yourself professionally in a year’s time?

These are just a small range of the many questions you could ask to understand your prospective associate tutors better, and to get a good idea of what motivates them to be an independent educator.

It’s always a good idea to leave some time during the interview for associate tutors to ask you questions as well. Prepare to answer questions about your own tutoring business and practice, as well as about your expectations for whoever fills the position as your new associate tutor.

Best of luck with the hiring process!