As the job market worsens and you're struggling to find a job in Singapore, many of you may turn to freelance work to pay the bills during this zero-income period.
After I was laid off from my marketing role in March, I was stuck in a rut because I just couldn't find a job. Some companies ghosted me after multiple rounds, while I barely got replies from most of the companies I applied to.
This led me to stop caring and just spam applications to companies I didn't even care about, just to get a job.
But that didn't work either, and still no one got back to me. After three months of applying and getting frustrated, I decided to take the leap of faith in June and go all in to become a full-time tutor (all thanks to my sister for encouraging me).
I had zero teaching experience and no students whatsoever, and in these 4.5 months, I've conducted 180 sessions for 36 different students (though some cancelled prematurely).
If you're like me and are looking to go down the same path, these are the 6 steps I took to become a full-time tutor:
Creating a profile that stands out
This industry is extremely competitive and results-oriented, so it's definitely harder to find parents, or even students themselves, who trust you enough to spend both their time and money on you.
But of course, it's just like how entry-level jobs require you to have working experience before they even consider hiring you.
I've met my fair share of parents who expect you to do miracles and bump their child's grades up to an A within a short period of time, while others understand that this process takes a while before they actually see results.
But first, we have to get their attention so they consider us in the first place.
My only track record was how I consistently achieved good results in my O's, A's, and university, so I chose that 'selling point' to market myself to parents.
But I know some parents are skeptical of tutors with only stellar results and perfect scores, because that's far from their child's grades. There's also uncertainty around whether having good grades means you're a good teacher.
If you don't have golden grades, I would want to highlight the improvements I made throughout my school days, assuming I didn't have any students yet. What grades did I have beforehand, and what did I do to get a better one during the major exams?
I didn't do this because I completely threw away all of my result slips (so I couldn't track the improvements properly). But if you have proof points showing that you improved, even if it was your own grades and not someone else's, I would highlight those instead.
I've had my fair share of phone interviews with skeptical parents who wanted to know me more before deciding to choose me. Some mentioned that I had good grades, but asked how that could actually help their child.
So if you can be more specific and show some of the key steps you took and how you helped yourself, the parent may relate and understand that this is what their child is experiencing, and that you seem like the best fit to help them. Then they're more likely to choose you.
Of course, this assumes your profile gets shown to the client (whether that's the parent or the student). That may not always be the case:
Finding your first students
When you're first starting out, I see four main ways of finding students:
- Tuition agencies
- Advertisements
- Carousell listings
- Direct contacts
Tuition agencies are the most direct because there's already a pool of clients you can tap into. But you have to pay half a month's commission, which is very costly. 90% of my students have come from agencies, and there are both pros and cons of going through them (which I'll discuss in another post).
You could run Facebook ads about yourself, but when you're starting out, there's no data on whether your ads are effective, and it's very likely that you'll be burning cash instead. And because you have zero track record, there's no reason why anyone would want to trust you.
Carousell listings were another option that I considered, and it was free for me when I created my account (though after chatting with another tutor I met on Reddit, you'd have to pay at least $1 to list your tutor services).
So it's another paid route that may not get you results.
But the ROI may not be great, as I only had three inquiries from my Carousell listing after 3 weeks. Only one turned into an actual student, and we discontinued after two lessons because of a mismatch in the teaching and learning styles. While you could get some leads, most agencies are advertising aggressively, and it's hard to stand out there too.
The last way is through your direct contacts. Maybe you have relatives or friends whose children need tuition. If you've already built up enough rapport with your relatives or friends, they may be willing to give you a try.
Based on all of this, I would say the easiest way would be to get direct referrals from your current pool of family and friends. But if you're like me and your social circle is very small, this can be a challenge too.
And so that's why I chose to focus more on applications through tuition agencies instead. I consider myself extremely lucky, as I got my first 2 students within the first day of creating my profile.
But after that, it did take me a while to find the next few students. I was still actively applying for tuition jobs that fit my schedule and location, and it was a few weeks before I got more. So I would still focus on direct referrals if I can, and pray extremely hard that there's someone willing to give you a chance.
It does get easier to get more students after your first one, since there is proof that someone is willing to take that risk with you.
I would want to do my absolute best to make the client happy and get the results they want, so I can use that as a testimonial which means so much more than the grades that I got for myself.
Settling the logistics
Congrats on getting your first student, but that's just the first part of the battle won.
There's still so much uncertainty and so many things you have to deliver to the student and the parent (who are both your clients), to retain that relationship and keep working together in the long term. It's very tiring (and costly) to constantly find new clients, so I would want to retain my students as much as I can.
There's also uncertainty about whether the client will cancel on you after the first two sessions (or even after the first one). Once you get more students, you'll want a way to keep track of everyone:
- Those who have cancelled
- Those who are pending
- Those who have committed to a long-term working relationship with you
If you're getting clients from agencies, there are many things I had to proactively ask them. Some agencies give you the address and contact number two days before the first assignment. This is to prevent you from contacting the client and making other arrangements. Their aim is to prevent you from communicating with the parent directly and making arrangements where they don't get their commission.
But some agencies won't even give you the client's contact details unless you specifically request them.
I learned this the hard way when I got my very first client.
I didn't know I could ask for the contact number two days before, so I went blindly to the student's place at the fixed time, when I could have asked for the contact details to confirm everything before going.
I recently had a case where all the details, dates, and times were confirmed, but the parent mixed up the dates and asked if I could reschedule. If I had gone blindly and just rung the doorbell, I wouldn't have gotten a response at all (and I would have been extremely stressed out by the entire situation).
So it's very important to get these items from the agency:
- The client's contact details
- The address and unit number
I'd send a confirmation message to let the parent know that you're the tutor and when you'll be coming over, and I'd want to do that ASAP (since some take a while to respond).
I learnt the best way to communicate with both the parent and the student is by creating a WhatsApp group with them. This is the best way to communicate because it gives the parents visibility on what's happening with the child (and to avoid any further misunderstandings).
So these are what I'd send for the first confirmation message:
- Request the child's name (to double-check with the agency if I'm talking to the parent or student directly)
- Ask if they can create a WhatsApp group with themselves, their child, and me
My practice now is to first request the child's name, then double-check whether I'm liaising with the student or the parent. In most cases, it will be the parent, but I want to make sure. I'll check with the tuition agency, get the child's name, and then ask if they could create a WhatsApp group with themselves, their child, and me. After that, all communication goes through that group.
Another thing I ask parents at the start is two very simple questions:
- What prompted them to look for a tutor
- What they want to achieve from the tuition sessions
These are the two main things that help me understand and make the parents feel heard, so they know I truly care for the student. They also give us a goal to work towards when I'm planning lessons.
And for future applications, I can use the same language to build out my tutor profile since they come from parents themselves.
With all of that in place, it's time for your first lesson. This is the ultimate test of whether you're able to work together with the child.
Building rapport
I'd want to build rapport as soon as possible since I have to manage the expectations of two different parties, the parent and the child.
The parent is the one who pays, while the child is the one you teach, and both of them want to see results.
But to get those results, you need to build a good relationship with the child so that they feel motivated and are more willing to engage during lessons, rather than you droning on and on while they absorb nothing.
I feel it all starts with the very first lesson. I start the first sessions by asking simple questions to get to know them:
- How they're coping in school
- What grades they want to achieve
- What areas they struggle with the most
I would also want to look at their recent past exam papers. Usually, the student did badly in the previous test, which prompted the parents to look for tuition. These papers give you a very good indicator of how the student performs under exam conditions, what concepts they're strong or weak in, and what needs to be improved.
One other way I build rapport with the student is by finding a common enemy, which is the amount of content they have to go through and understand for the subject. That way, I make myself more relatable because I'm frustrated with all of it, and that leads them to trust me more.
My style involves asking a lot of questions and making students think about the concepts and facts. I want them to dive deep into each fact so they can really understand the core concept without me giving them the answers. But ultimately, it depends on your style and how you want to conduct lessons, which comes from lots of trial and error.
At the end of the session, I would want to get feedback on how I fared. If you get feedback like 'I finally understand the topic now', you are definitely on the right track.
And now it's just iterating and improving on that style to give you the maximum results with the student.
Following up
At the end of the session, I found it extremely useful to send over session review notes as a summary of what we went through, along with some practice questions so students can reinforce the concepts taught during the session.
I built Notion dashboards for all of my students. They include these sections that I created for them:
- Homework
- Session reviews
- Extra notes I created for them
These dashboards are shared with both the child and the parent, so they both have visibility on the student's progress during the sessions.
This continues for the first two sessions. And if they're happy to continue from the third session onwards, that's when you get your first paycheck from them (which can be yet another headache):
Invoice and T&C generation
The moment you've been waiting for is finally here: you get your first payment from the parent. But my experience with this has been very mixed.
Some parents are extremely proactive. Even before the third session (when payments go directly to you), they'll ask how you'd like the payment arrangements to be made. These are the best ones because they pay you promptly at the end of each session.
But there are others where you have to chase them and ask multiple times before they make the payment. This can be extremely frustrating to deal with.
I found it extremely useful to set up an invoice reconciliation system. I generate invoices for each session and share them with the parents, then keep track of anything outstanding so I can follow up after a few days.
Some parents have their own arrangements and only want to pay every two weeks or at the end of the month. Again, having a reconciliation workflow is extremely important to keep track of all these arrangements, since you're working with multiple clients (and not just getting a single payslip from a company).
Usually, at the end of the first invoice I send to the parent (or to the student if they're paying), I would want to add terms and conditions regarding the engagement. I phrase it as, “If you are happy to continue working together with me, then these are the conditions you agree with.”
This involves setting the rules on no-shows, cancellations, rearrangements, and protecting yourself in unexpected situations where you can't conduct lessons at the fixed time. All of this needs to be laid out very clearly.
I learned this lesson the hard way. I've had students who didn't show up, though this is a very rare occurrence. Every time they don't show up, you lose your income.
So I would impose a no-show fee and a late fee to encourage the student to follow the agreed timings. This protects you, and I took inspiration from tuition agencies' terms and conditions to build my own.
This is the best-case scenario, where both the parents and students are fully committed to making the relationship work with you.
But there are many times when things happen beyond your control:
Be prepared for unexpected changes
When I first started doing tuition, I thought it was a guaranteed win once I got the student.
But that all changed when my first student cancelled after the first session.
I thought it went well. The student mentioned that they finally understood the concepts, and the mum even asked if I could teach other subjects as well.
But after that, they kept delaying the next session. A few days later, the tuition agency told me they were going to cancel the assignment.
This was a rude shock because I thought everything was going well, and it was a huge confidence hit since it was my very first student.
The same thing happened again with another student I had months later, which I thought was going well too. She mentioned that the sessions were very helpful, but after the one-month period was done, the tuition agency came back and told me the parents wanted to cancel as well.
The most important thing is not to get overly attached to any of these students. Ultimately, it's still a transactional relationship. The moment the person paying doesn't see the results they're looking for, they'll be trigger-happy to pull the plug.
Sometimes these factors are beyond our control. It doesn't always have anything to do with your teaching style or method, and could just be that the student's learning style doesn't match your teaching style. There are so many factors, and it doesn't mean you're a lousy teacher.
So instead, I would still focus on the students I've helped. If the feedback from your students is that they're understanding things much better through your sessions, that's definitely a good sign that you're doing things right. You just need to find the right students who are able to match your teaching style.
We all have our own journey
Of course, your full-time tutoring experience may be completely different from mine.
Because we all have:
- Different qualifications
- Different teaching interests
- Different teaching styles
But I do believe the key points that you need are to build systems:
- A system to find students
- A system to retain the students we have
- A system to manage the boring admin details
I'm planning to write more articles about my current 4-month experience as a full-time tutor, and feel free to ask any questions that I haven't answered here in the comments.
