30th August 2019 9:00
By Blue Tutors
All of our tutors have the opportunity to create public profiles so that potential students can browse through the profiles and choose the tutors they would be happy to hear from. It’s a good way for tutors to advertise themselves and attempt to stand out from everyone else. Of course, we’re proud of the quality of all of our tutors, and they are all intelligent interesting people who write good profiles, so standing out is actually very difficult.
We have had situations where students simply say “I saw this tutor and I want to speak to them” but obviously we can’t guarantee that a tutor will be able to take on a particular student, so a student being so specific about the tutor they want isn’t a great approach. We always try to get a student’s requirements so we can look for the best tutor for them. Hopefully it will be a tutor whose profile the student has seen and already approved.
So what’s the point of the tutor profiles? There are really two reasons. The first is so that our tutors seem more like real human beings and not faceless robot teachers. In an ever increasingly computerised world, maintaining the personable appearance of tutors is really important to help students to feel at ease with the whole process.
The second reason is that many students or their parents worry about a tutor “getting through” to the student and actually helping them improve. This is where a profile can make a real difference. Of course tutors should ultimately be judged on their tutoring ability but if their personality doesn’t allow them to engage the student then it’s a pointless endeavour. We find that parents often imagine the ideal tutor for their son or daughter, and choose a profile which most closely matches.