Tips on hiring the right tutor

If you’re looking for some extra educational support for your family, you need to find the right tutor for the job. Here are some tips on nailing that decision.

What makes an effective tutor? And how can you tell they will be the right person to suit your family’s needs? To find out, and to help identify some hiring criteria and tactics, we turned to tutoring expert JEROME BARTY-TAYLOR, Managing Director of Barty Education and Development (BartyED).

Jerome has spent many years meeting tutors of all backgrounds and specialities in Hong Kong as part of the hiring process for BartyED. Every potential tutor is put through a rigorous, threephase assessment – and most of them never make the cut into his crack team of specialists. Here’s how you can put your own spin on Jerome’s approach when it comes to hiring an expert tutor for your own family.

STEP 1: Formal interview

What Jerome does:

“Some tutors look great on paper, but in person they can lack the required emotional intelligence or essential communication skills. A formal interview helps identify any red flags. To mentor and inspire young people, you must be able to respond empathically and bring charisma as well as an understanding of the subject.”

What you can do:

“This is about chemistry. Take the candidate for a coffee and trust your gut – if you don’t want to spend time with this person, your child likely won’t either. Prepare for this meeting and look for a potential tutor who does the following:

• shows an active interest in your child’s learning needs; • clearly articulates their approach to learning;

• shares examples of resilience and flexibility; and

• shows confidence when answering your role-play scenarios.”

STEP 2: Academic testing

What Jerome does:

“At BartyED, candidates perform a written, supervised exam. I review all of these personally. If a candidate can’t differentiate between verbal, situation and dramatic irony, they can’t teach English Literature.”

What you can do:

“Focus on checking all of their credentials and references, and also verifying their specific curriculum knowledge. (For example, ‘Remind me what the MYP is marked out of again? I never can remember.’)”

STEP 3: Engagement session

What Jerome does:

“This is a role-play exercise where BartyED team members emulate different student needs, from disengaged teens to those with learning differences. I’ve been told it’s harrowing (by tutors who have gone on to join us full-time!).”

What you can do:

“You can emulate a role-play session by simply sharing a piece of work that your student is struggling with. Ask the candidate to provide some specific advice on how they would help to improve your work. If you have a rubric to hand, how clearly can the candidate justify their suggestions against it?”

If your family needs some additional educational support this year, reach out to BartyED via bartyed.com or call 2799 6438. You can read more expert advice from Jerome and the team at expatliving.hk/living-inhongkong/schools.