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.
Updated Subject List 2024
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 that can be shared publicly and used by students who are not already on Spires to join the platform with you are their tutor.
Simply add whatever you want the URL to be in the box and this will create a unique URL for your profile that can be shared.
You can then share your Spires profile on social media or with potential students. Those who sign up using your URL will be on a flat 5% platform fee on the job created with them to cover the basic operating expenses and payment fees of Spires.
Example Profile
Here is an example of a great profile (and tutor!) that wins consistently wins bids on Spires:
