Why is your Tutor Profile important?
To tutor on Spires you need to win bids.
To win bids, you need to have a good profile as this is what clients will see on our website in order to decide who to work with.
To stand out, your profile needs to be professional, clear, concise, focus on your track record and expertise and offer good value for money.
What makes a good profile? Watch the video and read the guide below.
Video Guide
How to Create a Good Profile
A high-quality profile picture - Ideally a high-resolution photo of yourself dressed smartly, as this conveys that you are professional.
Appropriate tutoring subjects - The best tutors focus on a few subjects at either school or university level. These selections also affect which searches you show up for on our website, which jobs you see by default on the jobs board, and what job notifications you get by email.
Clear and concise sections - Each section comes with additional guidance when you click edit. Make sure all the sections are filled in with sufficient detail, but keep them clear and concise. Listing the 50 papers you have published is irrelevant. Saying you published 50 papers in your field is a valuable statement and quite an achievement! People have short attention spans, grab it before you lose it (go on you can list the top couple).
Background check - All tutors must add a background check in order to bid on jobs. See our background check articles for more information.
Qualifications - Relevant degrees and teaching qualifications.
Testimonials - Add your best success stories, reviews and more. Don't spam these though, 2-3 good testimonials is enough.
Spelling, punctuation and grammar - Clients will see your profiles and judge you on this. If you are not a native English speaker, it is worth asking someone who is to check your profile.
No external links - or your social media on your profile. This is against our terms and conditions.
** Do Not link external or personal tutoring websites**
Profile Settings
1. Public Profile Price
This controls the price displayed on your public profile on our website to clients.
It partly determines your competitiveness relative to other tutors.
It is worth checking what the general market rate is for similar tutors on our website.
To do so, logout of spires and click 'See Tutors' on our website, then go to your subject/level to see what other tutors are charging.
Also, it should be close to what you typically bid on jobs, otherwise there will be discrepancies between what you bid on jobs and what the client sees when they view your profile.
Be realistic about both market rates and what people can pay actually pay for your services, not just what you hope to earn.
2. Tutoring Subjects
This selection is very important because it controls what subjects you show up for in searches on our website, what jobs you see by default on our jobs board and what jobs you get notified about by email.
Please only choose subjects that you are confident tutoring and have experience in.
Choosing excessively wide subjects/levels will not only spam your email inbox with job requests, but as explained in our Tutor Scorecard sections, speculative bidding on jobs and/or winning bids and doing a poor job in subjects that you do not specialise in will hurt your performance on Spires.
Subjects are confirmed at the interview. If you add additional subjects after the interview, then these will need to be approved by the team. We will be checking the subjects, along with background checks, most mornings that we are working.
Why have my subjects been rejected/removed?
The Spires team will moderate profiles and may remove or add subjects. This can be for a variety of reasons, but the most common one is that your profile did not explain why that subject was selected, and did not mention anything relevant to the teaching experience that you have in this area. It could also be that it was a very weak reason, e.g. if an Engineering tutor with a background in lecturing happens to speak French, that would not make them a French tutor and the many qualified French tutors on Spires would agree with this.
We may also add subjects to your profile. If, for example, we see that you talk about being an A-level physics teacher and have not selected the subject, then we may select it for you. If you wish to remove this later, this is fine. The only reason we select subjects for you is that you would not otherwise know of their existence, nor would you receive email notifications for potential opportunities related to this.
A good example is shown below, where a Computer Science tutor has selected the relevant subject and level combinations for themselves. Note that they have not selected every remote possibility, only Computer Science and related subjects.
3. Public Profiles
Your profile can be set as public or hidden in the 'Profile Settings' section of settings:
If your profile is set to public (default), then your profile will be visible on our website and potential students can search for your profile and contact you directly about potential tutoring requests.
If you check the 'Hide Profile' box, your profile will be private. It will not be visible on our website, you cannot be contacted directly by potential students and your profile will only be visible to students whose jobs you bid on. You can make your profile public or hidden at any time; if you are too busy for new students for instance.
4. Personal URL
Your Personal URL is a unique web address for your Tutor Profile. It can be shared publicly and used by students who are not already registered on Spires to join the platform and connect directly with you as their tutor.
Simply enter what you would like your URL to be in the box provided. This will create a unique link to your Spires Tutor Profile that you can share with potential students, including through social media, your website, or other professional channels.
Students who join Spires through your Personal URL will benefit from a flat 5% platform fee on the job created with you, which covers the basic operating and payment processing costs of Spires.
How does the Personal URL work?
It is important that students follow the process through your Personal URL so that they are correctly connected with you:
The student clicks your Personal URL.
This takes them directly to your public Spires Tutor Profile.The student clicks “Contact [Tutor Name]”.
This is displayed in the green box on your profile.The student creates their job request.
They will be guided through the usual job creation process, where they can provide details about the tuition they are looking for.The student creates their Spires account.
If they are not already registered, they will be prompted to sign up by providing an email address and creating a password.The student chooses whether to make the job public.
During the job creation process, they will see a tick box giving them the option to make their job visible to other tutors on the Jobs Board. If they only wish to work with you, they do not need to select this option.The student verifies their email address.
They must complete the email verification step before their account and job request are fully created.You are connected.
Once the process is complete, the student’s job will be connected directly to you and you can continue arranging tuition through Spires.
Please note: Simply visiting your profile through the Personal URL is not enough to establish the connection. The student must click “Contact [Tutor Name]” and complete the job creation, account registration and email verification process through the link for the referral to be correctly associated with you.
Example Profile
Here is an example of a great profile (and tutor!) that wins consistently wins bids on Spires:
