McElroy Tutor Frequently Asked Questions

The Hiring Process

Tutor Profiles

Policies

Curriculum

Marketing

The Hiring Process

Basically, we're just trying to get to know you better, and to familiarize you with how we work as a company and what is expected of you as a tutor.  Among other topics, expect to discuss:

1) The details of your application.
2) Your experience level.
3) Your list of subjects; what subjects could you teach immediately?
4) What we expect from you.
5) What you should expect of us.
6)  Suggestions as to how to improve your tutor profile so that you will find more students, and what you should be studying / reading / doing to prepare yourself in the meantime.

The purpose of the second interview is for you to speak directly with our Founder and President, Brian McElroy, and for him to answer any additional questions that you may have.

If you "pass" the interview, then he will also upgrade your Tutor Rating, set your initial Hourly Rate, and post your Tutor Calendar (using Google Calendar) on your profile page.    

Once you have passed your second interview with Brian, you are ready to start accepting students. 

At McElroy Tutoring, we're proud of the exceptional value that we provide to our students, our clients, and our tutors.  We funnel approximately 90% of our gross profits from every tutoring session directly to our tutors' bank accounts.  In contrast, "Big Test Prep" companies such as Princeton, Kaplan, Powerscore and Club Z will normally pay their tutors only 15-25% of what they charge, taking a greedy 75%-85% cut for themselves in the process.   

Of course, like any other small business, we still have expenses that we need to cover.  Staff, Rent, Phone Costs, Credit Card Processing Fees, Insurance, Taxes, Legal Fees, Supplies, etc.  And the 10% cut that we do take does not always allow us to fully cover our costs. 

For this reason, we require all our tutors to pay a membership fee in order to have their profiles continuously featured on our website.  Dues are only $12/month and are administered by PayPal Inc., the world leader in secure online payments.  After registering for dues, you are free to cancel your subscription at anytime, with no penalty whatsoever (other than your tutor profile being dropped). 

Because we arrange thousands of tutoring sessions each year, and we pay our tutors very well for their services, nearly all of our tutors will quickly discover that the many benefits of membership are well worth this nominal fee.

In addition, we guarantee that you will find at least 1 paying student within your first 6 months of membership.  If for some reason this does not occur, then we will be happy to temporarily suspend your PayPal subscription and grant you up to 6 additional months of free tutor membership until you find work.  Also, if for some reason we decline your services as a tutor after your second interview with Brian McElroy, then we will gladly refund your account for your first month's dues.   

Think of it this way:  we will be working just as hard on your behalf as you will on ours.  We now offer our clients the services of a full-time office staff,  and we spend around $1000/month on advertising of various forms.  We also have a nearly ubiquitous presence on the Internet, due to our state-of-the-art, user-friendly website and our very high amount of original educational content, placing us first or near-first in countless Google searches for test prep and private tutoring in 25 cities nationwide ("SAT Tutoring in San Diego," "ISEE Tutors in San Francisco," "GMAT Tutors in Austin," "GRE Tutors in Providence," etc.").  This allows us to find more students per tutor than nearly any tutoring company in America!

Registering for monthly membership dues also confirms to us that you are serious about becoming a successful tutor through our company.  We don't want to waste your time, or ours, if you're not serious about this job. 

Once you have signed up for Tutor Membership Dues, we will send you a personalized flier that you can post in neighborhood locations such as coffee houses, libraries, grocery stores and restaurants (see below for an example flier).  Please give us up to 10 days to produce these fliers for you. 

Finally, please don't forget to contact our Hiring Manager and Tutor Representative, Vince Kotchian (wkotchian@gmail.com), to schedule your second interview with Brian McElroy sometime within 30 days of registering for membership dues.   If we don't hear from you after two weeks of receiving your tutor membership confirmation from PayPal, then we will call you to remind you of this requirement. 

This is a difficult question to answer, because it varies widely from one tutor to the next.  Some of our newest tutors have become very successful in a matter of weeks, and for other tutors it has taken up to a year or more before these tutors were able to find enough students to completely fill their schedules. 

The answer to this question also depends on how many hours you make available for tutoring each week.  The more open your schedule, the more likely we are to find students for you.  Remember that tutoring is usually done from 9AM-9PM Mondays-Thursdays, and 9AM-6PM on weekends.  In general, the more tutoring hours you are looking for, the less you should charge per hour. 

The amount of tutoring hours we are able to find for you depends upon several outside factors, many of which are beyond our direct control.  For example, tutoring is a very seasonal business, and at certain times of the year (such as the summer months), there is not much work to go around.  However, we are also very busy at other times, such as the last 3 months of each year (finals, college application deadlines, last chance SAT and ACT, ISEE and GRE) and early spring (SATs, ACTs for juniors/sophomores, and AP exams).

In addition, the amount of tutoring requests that you receive through our website is directly related to the amount of time and effort you put into your Tutor Profile (make sure to add a headshot, testimonials, locations and blog entries), how affordable your rates are, and the amount of grassroots marketing (fliers, Craigslist postings, business cards) that you are able to do in your local community.  While grassroots marketing is not mandatory, we highly recommend it as a great way to find clients close to your home. 

Please remember that we have many tutors, and that in some cases, clients will choose to try several different tutors before they make their final decisions.  It is up to you to make a good first impression with your client, to arrive on time and prepared for each lesson, to act in a professional manner, and to schedule future lessons.   Remember that a job well-done and positive word-of-mouth from your current clients are the very best ways to ensure a steady flow of future students. 

Above all, please try to be patient.  Because we must first offer any available students to the tutors with the most seniority, it might take a little while before we are able to fill out your schedule with new students.  We ask that you give us at least 4-6 months to do so, preferably a full year.  Many of our most successful tutors had very few students during their first year with us, but they continued to be patient, and they now have very busy schedules.

Tutor Profiles

In order to show up in Zip Code searches, you must enter your Latitude and Longitude.  To do this, you must log onto your profile, Click Loctations/Edit, and click the "AutoFill" button that is on the right of the "Latitude and Longitude" field.

Your Tutor Rating is a reflection of several factors, including: your interview status, your paperwork status, student feedback, client satisfaction, staff feedback, student score improvements, etc.  Please click here for more information on Tutor Ratings. 

To change your email, login with your original username and password, and click "My Account."  There, you can change your email or your password at any time.

Be very careful when entering your email:  if you make any typos, you will not receive any emails from McElroy Tutoring or its clients. 

No.  Your testimonials can be from any student, parent or teacher you have worked with in the past. 

Policies

Yes--you can bill for any tutoring work done at home, via email or over the phone.  However, please make sure to mention this policy to your student and his/her parents before you begin this type of arrangement. 

You should also keep close track of your billable hours (we suggest that you round to the nearest 5 minute increment), and be careful not to "overbill."  If you edited a student's essay for 20 minutes, and spent another 10 minutes checking your email, for example, this does not mean that you can bill them for 30 minutes of work!

Yes--please contact your student or client as quickly as possible.  If the client leaves a phone number, we suggest that you call the client first, then send an email to follow-up and confirm in writing the details of your phone message or conversation.    (We also ask that you CC our office staff (staff@mcelroytutoring.com) to all emails that you send to clients, so that we can "stay in the loop" and help arrange scheduling and payment.)

Our clients value prompt responses from their tutors, and a quick reply will increase your chances of being "hired" by the client.   Remember that in many cases, our clients are emailing several tutors before they make their final decisions.   

You are also free to schedule an initial one-hour lesson with students at any time.  However, any time a lesson is scheduled, we require you to 1) add this event to your Google Document Timesheet as quickly as possible and 2) contact our office to confirm pre-payment.   (Our company policy is that all lessons must be paid for 24 hours in advance.)  If you do not contact our office to confirm pre-payment, then we cannot guarantee that you will be paid in full for the lesson.

Here are some additional tips to consider when contacting clients:

1) Call First, Email Later.  If a client leaves his/her phone # in the contact form, it's always better to call first. Phone conversations are more immediate, more revealing, and more intimate than email exchanges--they will give your client a much better idea of your personality and communication style.  If they do not answer when you call, then you should leave a voice message and follow-up with a brief email with your contact information (don't forget to CC "staff@mcelroytutoring.com").  Please try to resist the temptation to write a long e-mail response with a bunch of questions about subject matter, locations and scheduling--these are minor issues that are much more effectively addressed over the phone anyway.    Even if you do connect with your client over the phone right away, it's still a good idea to send a quick follow-up email as a matter of courtesy.  This also helps them find you if they later happen to lose your phone number! 

Whenever you call new clients,  we suggest that you pull up their original email in your Gmail account (or if they contacted you my phone, you can compose a new email with their name in the Subject Heading), copy-paste the text into a new email ("Compose Mail"), and start taking notes on your computer while you talk to them.  (This is easier with the aid of a hands-free device.)  You can then send that email, with the notes you have taken, to your own email address, and to the McElroy staff, as a way to keep everyone on the same page and record student/client information.

Most importantly, check your email / voicemail often, and don't procrastinate on returning calls, because time is of the essence when searching for the right tutor! 

2)  Emphasize that we offer free consultations with any new tutor, 25% off their 1st hour of tutoring if they pay by phone, and a Pay-as-you-go Policy.   Don't forget to mention to any potential clients and students that their initial (phone, email or in-person) consultation with you is free of charge,  their first hour of tutoring is 25% off if they choose to pay by phone, and that they never have to pay for more than one lesson at a time.  This helps to demonstrate that you are confident in your abilities and that they will choose to return for more tutoring.  The key is "getting your foot in the door" so that you are given an opportunity to showcase your tutoring talents in person. 

3) Be Flexible and Willing to Tutor New Subjects (so long as you are honest about your experience level).  Many of you have been contacted by students who are looking for tutoring in subjects/classes where you are not 100% confident in your tutoring expertise, and have consequently turned down those requests.

We understand that in an ideal world you could tutor only those subjects that you wish, but the reality is that private tutors need to be flexible when it comes to subject matter.  Remember that these clients have contacted you for a reason--maybe you are not the most experienced tutor available, but they chose you anyway because they thought your personality would make a good fit for that student. 

So long as you are honest and up-front about your level (or lack) of expertise ("I'd be happy to help--I don't have too much experience with tutoring (subject) but would be willing to give it a try," for example), it's OK to start expanding your list of subjects tutored.  Remember that in many instances, a good tutor serves as a glorified "study buddy"--not necessarily someone who knows the answer to every question, but simply a smart, friendly mentor who can work alongside students and help them out along the way. 

4) Be Patient, and Don't Take it Personally if it doesn't Work Out.  If necessary, we can lower your Hourly Rate to help find you more students.  In many instances, you will do everything right when responding to a client or clients, and it simply won't pan out.  Maybe they found another tutor, maybe they decided to drop the class or postpone the test until next year, or maybe they simply couldn't afford it.  The point is that you shouldn't take it personally or give up prematurely.   In many ways, finding the right students is just a game of chance, so stay positive and remember that the hardest part making a living as a private tutor is finding your first few students.  If you're good at what you do, and you stay patient, positive word-of-mouth will continue to spread and you will ultimately find success as a tutor.  

If you think that your starting hourly rate may be too high and thus preventing your from finding new students, then send us a quick email, let us know what you want your new rate to be, and we'll be happy to lower it for you.  Although it sometimes takes a while to get the ball rolling, nearly all of our tutors will find at least one paying student within their first 6 months.

Tutoring sessions are one-hour minimum:  in most cases, your initial meeting with a McElroy client will be for one hour only.  We do recommend minimum 1.5-hour sessions for high school students and up, and maximum 1.5 hour sessions for grades K-8.  We do not recommend lessons of more than 2 hours. 

Hourly rates depend on the number of hours that the client purchases in advance.  For Junior Tutors, for example, your rate is anywhere from $35 to $50/hr, or for Senior Tutors, anywhere from $55 to $75/hr.  In most cases, we encourage our tutors to leave the billing questions and monetary negotiations to our office staff.  However, if asked directly by a client, you should say "my rate is between (25 hour rate) and ("Pay-as-you-go" rate), depending on the number of hours you purchase in advance." 

If you are unsure as to exactly what your hourly rate is, just pull up your profile on the website (the easiest way to do so is to search for your name in the upper right hand corner of the website) and click "View Packages and Rates."

Please note:  We do not offer discount packages for Tutors in Training (tutors with hourly rates of $35/hr and below). 

No.  All payments must be made to McElroy Tutoring by Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Google Checkout or personal check, at least 24 hours in advance of the lesson.

Because our clients often choose to pay for only one lesson at a time, we cannot guarantee that you will be paid for lessons unless you contact our office by phone or office before each lesson to confirm pre-payment. 

Please remember that we enforce a strict 24-hour cancellation policy for all lessons.  However, tutors are responsible for promptly notifying our office of any cancellations made with less than 24 hours notice. 

No, you do not have to start at that level.  Our tutors have widely varied levels of experience and qualifications, from relative newcomers to veteran educators with decades of experience.   For this reason, we do allow some of our tutors to begin their McElroy Tutoring careers as Senior, Master, Executive or even Ph.D. tutors. 

There are some requirements that you must meet in order to be "promoted", however.  You must have a minimum of 2 years of teaching and/or tutoring experience in order to become a Senior Tutor, 4 years of experience to become a Master Tutor, 7 years of experience to become an Executive Tutor, and 10 years of experience to become a Ph.D. Tutor.   We also require you to maintain an excellent Tutor Rating, and to have recently earned scores in the 95th percentile or above on any standardized test that you teach.    Please see the chart below for more information on these requirements.  

No.  Because we only take a 0-10% cut of what we charge for your tutoring, we are not able to compensate you for travel expenses such as gas costs.  However, we do make every effort to try to find you students within a 15-20 minute drive of your home.  This is why it is so essential to enter multiple, strategic locations on your tutor profile.   Your tutor location need not be your home area; it could be near your work address, for example, or in a different part of town that you frequently visit. 

No--you don't have to register for dues right away.  However, please remember that your profile should be on the website for at least a month before you wish to begin tutoring,  so that clients can see your profile and we can schedule lessons for you in advance.

We are proud of the fact that many of our tutors have been working for us since our inception, and that our tutor retention rate is one of the very best in the industry.   Once you're a McElroy Tutor, we want you to remain a McElroy Tutor. 

We also understand that since you are all very well-educated and well-traveled people, there will be times when you have the opportunity to travel to a foreign country on vacation, to be admitted to a prestigious graduate school, or to accept a professorship in another city, etc.  Simply put:  you have lots of options, and you might need to occasionally take a break from tutoring for us.  So, if you wish to temporarily drop your profile from our website and "suspend" your Tutor Membership, you can do so any time with no penalty. If and when you choose to re-activate your membership, your Membership Dues will resume at $25/month and we will restore your Tutor Profile to the website. You can continue to suspend and re-activate your Tutor Membership at any time without any further increase in the cost of your Dues.

Yes.  All we need is your bank's routing number and your account number.  

No.  You are always paid the same amount (see "Tutor Pay Rate" on the right hand column of the Tutor Pay Scale) per hour, regardless of the package purchased by your client.   

Curriculum

Yes.  Please click here to read our lists of recommended Test-Prep Books and Materials. 

In general, while we do provide our tutors with certain proprietary test-prep and tutoring materials created by Brian McElroy and others, we do not believe in handicapping our tutors by forcing them into a "one size fits all" teaching style.  Tutors can use any materials that they want, so long as those materials can be purchased by the general public.  However, we ask that you use OFFICIAL PRACTICE TESTS ONLY ("The Official Guide to the SAT, "The Real ACT Prep Guide," etc.) whenever possible.  

The big test-prep companies have some decent strategies in their books, and we always encourage out tutors to consult multiple sources when preparing their own unique lesson plans, but please remember that these companies' "practice tests" are always imitations of the real thing.   Sometimes, however (when preparing for the GRE, for example), the official guides are an insufficient source of practice, so you have no choice as a tutor but to assign your student imitation practice tests.

In general, you should study all the materials you can find about the subjects you instruct, never be afraid to write your own materials or improve on existing ones, and always concentrate on staying up-to-date.  Remember that continued mastery of any subject requires persistence, curiosity, flexibility and dedication to one's craft, and that private tutoring is no exception. 

You should first remind students that they will not receive the full benefit of private tutoring unless they complete their homework, and that the homework assignments you assign are for their own good. 

There are 2 solutions to this problem.

1)  Assign the student a section in their book, and have them complete 3 problems at a time (this is a good strategy for beginning test-prep students, since you can tweak their approach as you go and take any available opportunities to present a new lesson or concept).

2) Assign a section in the book, and have the student complete the entire section within the time allotted (this is only recommended for high-scoring students who are already well-prepared and/or quickly approaching their test date). 

Marketing

While we do spend some of our advertising budget on traditional forms of advertising (such as print advertisements) in select cities, the bulk of our marketing efforts is focused on finding tutoring clients by targeting Internet Searches for tutors (known as "Search Engine Optimization," or SEO).  McElroyTutoring.com is all over the Internet, and we are often on the first page of "natural" search results, as well as "Pay Per Click" advertisements,when a user searches for tutoring in his/her area, especially for SAT, ACT, ISEE, GRE and College Consulting.  For example, try Googling "ISEE tutors Chicago" and you will see that we are the very first result on the left side of the page (the "natural" search). 

So we've got the internet part all taken care of for you.  However, there are definitely a few things that you can do on your own to help yourself find new students:

1) Put fliers in local coffeeshops / supermarkets / restaurants / libraries, or pass them out at high school basketball games / football games etc. 

For those of you who have recently relocated, this will give you an excuse to explore your home neighborhoods! 

Once you have registered for Membership Dues, we will send you a free PDF of an example flier, with your personalized contact info included, that you can use for photocopying and disseminating.  We are still working on this but it should be done by or around the 15th of August, just in time for the school year rush.  Never underestimate the power of grassroots advertising!

2)  Post a Craigslist Services Posting (under Services / Lessons) with a link to your MT profile. 

In theory, Craigslist is a great way to find students easily and to "cut out the middleman."  But let's face it; there are thousands of posts on your local Craigslist every day, so it takes forever for students/clients to sift through them all and to separate the legitimate tutors from the con artists.  For this reason, you need something to quickly help your Services Posting stand out from the crowd.  Your McElroy Tutoring profile will do just that (not to mention allowing clients to purchase lessons with you instantly by credit card).

We will also be sharing a template of this type of advertisement with your Gmail account using Google Documents.   Feel free to personalize it however you like, and to post as often as you like.   And yes--you can include personal contact information, if you are comfortable with that.  Otherwise you can just include the office phone number.   

In order to place a link in Craigslist, just make sure to include the "http://" at the beginning of your web address and Craigslist will automatically add a link.  To see an example posting from one of our tutors, please click here.

3) Start Preparing yourself to tutor the SAT, ACT, ISEE, and/or GRE, and when you're ready, add them to the list of subjects on your Tutor Profile. 

While we offer tutoring in all subjects, we specialize in Test Prep, so by not offering any type of test prep in your subject list, you are at a distinct disadvantage to tutors who do.  Also, Test Prep is the most frequently requested type of tutoring.    Start Reading the Grades 9-12 Information Folder that we sent you (versions for K-8 and College/University are coming later this year) if you'd like to get prepared to tutor students for the SAT or the ACT. 

We ESPECIALLY recommend learning as much as possible about the ISEE, which is a standardized test, similar to the ACT, that is used by selective private high schools (Grades 5-12).  There are a ton of SAT and ACT tutoring companies out there, but we are one of the only companies that also specializes in ISEE prep. 

4)  Buy some Personalized MT Business Cards and Start Handing them Out. 

We offer all of our tutors their own personalized business Cards with the McElroy Logo and their personal contact information.  To see a sample card, or to order MT business cards, please click here.

References are a touchy subject in our field.  Many people do not want to admit that they or their family members have needed private tutoring.  (Hence the word "private.")  For this reason, it can be difficult to convince former students or clients agree to serve as references.     

That being said, if you are serious about finding new students, then you should always be willing to go the extra mile for any potential client.  So it's probably a good idea to recruit at least 2 reliable references that you can count on in these types of situations.

You can do one of two things:

1) Provide the phone numbers / email addresses of 2 former clients (but don't forget to secure each client's permission first).  (Recommended)

2) Explain that it is your policy not to give out your clients' names or contact information, in order to protect their privacy.   Then, refer them to the written student testimonials that you have posted on your McElroy tutor profile. 

You may also want to remind potential clients that their first hour of tutoring with you is 25% off, and that they never have to pay for more than one lesson at a time.  This provides them with more of an incentive to try an initial lesson with you.