We’ve all heard the same line: you can’t get a job without work experience but you can’t get work experience without a job. It’s a conundrum that virtually everyone has faced when looking for work.
But hold on: did you help students in lower grades with their homework? And did you use the money you earned tutoring high schoolers to help pay your school or college tuition? If so, you already have work experience.
You just need to know how to include it in your resume and cover letter.
What Tutors Are Made Of
Not everyone can help their classmates or other students understand their school subjects or coach them through their homework. It takes a certain temperament – a fair amount of empathy and compassion goes into the effort.
And then, we have a list of skills, personal and academic, to account for.
You might think that AP students would be uniquely qualified to tutor; they are the best of the brightest, after all. But you don’t have to be academically gifted to tutor your classmates. Arguably, personal skills – communication, empathy, patience and so on matter as much or more than academic prowess.
Ideally, you should be in good academic standing before tutoring anyone else, of course. But you don’t have to be at the top of your class to help bring your peers up to your level, especially not if you have the personal skills needed to get the job done.
If you’ve been thinking about tutoring, talk with your teachers and guidance counselors. They will be able to help you figure out how tutoring can enhance your own learning experiences while leading the learning for other students. You may even inspire your teachers to start a peer tutoring program if there isn’t one already in place.
How Tutoring Prepares You for the Workforce
In the last segment, we touched on leadership and communication; a couple of aspects that hiring managers look for on every job candidate’s resume. These are essential in today’s workforce precisely because they are lacking.
Let’s talk about how tutoring helps you build those skills, starting with communication.
You have to know many ways to convey the same information; to describe concepts that, till now, your pupils have not grasped. This does not mean you have to cultivate an expanded vocabulary – although having a lot of words at your disposal helps. Rather, it means you have to meet your pupils on their level.
Again, we’re not talking about levels of intellect but how your students take in and process information. For this, effective and active listening is a vital skill.
As any experienced tutor could tell you, listening effectively is the key to successful tutoring.
Another skill is leadership.
Your pupils look to you as an authority, at least where your subject matter is concerned. They expect you to lead the instruction and guide them out of their academic stalemates. Not only does this put you in a superior position academically, but it gives you the power to promote change in your tutees – even if it’s moving them from confused to assured.
Taking on this level of responsibility, speaks volumes about your character and personal development.
Why Employers Want to Hire Tutors
The leadership and communication skills you cultivate as a tutor are just two reasons why Human Resource managers would welcome your resume; there are others.
Think of the planning that goes into a single tutoring session. You and your pupil must coordinate schedules and find a place suitable to both of you and the subject you’re tutoring in.
You have to plan your lessons. What will you two work on today? What trouble is your student having with this topic? What if the session goes off on a tangent? You have to be ready for all of this and have the materials needed for every eventuality, too.
HR managers like to hire candidates with tutoring experience because they are responsible, reliable and excel at working independently.
How to List Your Tutoring Experience
Unless you managed to gain other work experience while still in school, your resume might look a little thin, which is why you should present a functional resume rather than the chronological format.
A functional resume still calls for you to list work experience but it emphasizes the skills you gained rather than your jobs and how long you held them.
How you list your skills depends on the position you’re applying for.
If you’re going for a management position, highlighting your skills in scheduling and coordination would work well for you. You should also point out the leadership and communication skills you developed through tutoring.
On the other hand, if you’re applying for an internship, it would be best to emphasize your critical thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as your ability to work independently.
These days, job candidates are expected to submit their resumes online, usually in a specific file format such as Word or defined forms. This allows the HR department to scan your document for specific keywords relating to the position they need to fill rather than taking the time to read through.
That’s why writing a resume and cover letter containing an appropriate number of such keywords is crucial to landing that coveted interview.
Whether you got into tutoring to make a little pocket money or to help your fellow students, in the end, the experience has many advantages overall and in your job search.
