Impressions are everything in academic tutoring. A client’s impression of you doesn’t just affect whether or not you get hired, it affects what they’re willing to pay for your services. That’s why even hours of work spent crafting the perfect resume can easily pay for itself many times over.

But what does it take to make a strong impression with an academic tutor resume? We’ve broken down every single step you’ll need to take and provided useful examples of what to do (and what not to do). By the end of this guide you’ll be ready to raise your rates and start applying for new tutoring positions with confidence.

What this guide will teach you:

• How to analyze resume examples to get inspiration
• What makes an academic tutor resume stand out
• Which audiences you should appeal to with your resume
• Exactly what you need to do about ATS
• How to properly format your resume
• The best length for a tutor resume
• How to list your education
• How to list additional training
• Which certifications you should consider adding
• How to most effectively list skills
• Which hard and soft skills you should include
• How to highlight your achievements
• Whether to add an objective or summary (and how to write both)
• How to write an academic tutor resume with little to no experience
• Why you should be using a resume builder

Tutor resume template examples

Even if you’re a seasoned tutor, starting with a blank resume can be tough. In our experience, starting off with some expertly curated examples is the best way to get your creative juices flowing. We’ve listed a few for you below.

As you look through them, try listing which aspects you’d like to use for your own academic tutor resume. Imagine you’re a recruiter at a tutoring company or a parent looking to hire one, look at these resumes through their eyes and consider how they might react.

Once you’ve built your list and have some idea of what you do (and don’t) want to include on your own resume, you’re ready to get started.

[Examples]

How to write a tutor resume that will get you noticed

Your academic tutor resume needs to get noticed, but you also need to ensure it’s for the right reasons. Now is not the time to get flashy and fancy, you need to show diligence, attention to detail, and excellent communication skills. In other words, your resume needs to reflect everything you’d expect from a great tutor.

The first way to do that is to consider your audience.

Why you need to consider who will read your resume

Writing tutors all know that one of the most important ways to improve a student’s writing is to get them to consider their audience. Just as a student shouldn’t write an essay the same way if it’s for a competition, compared to a large-scale test like the SAT, your resume needs to reflect your audience.

For example, someone hiring tutors to work at a private school will have completely different expectations and criteria than a parent looking for a math tutor for their child. Even the age of the students will greatly affect what they look for (after all, tutoring lower than a certain age becomes half babysitting).

So before you begin writing, follow our steps and think about your resume’s audience.

Getting past ATS

If you’re thinking “what on earth is ATS?” you’re not alone. While most everyday people have never heard of an Applicant Tracking System, they’re widely used by all kinds of businesses. The first thing you need to know is that if you’re only applying to individual people or families, you can skip to the next section.

However, if you’ll be applying to companies, schools, or agencies, there’s a chance they’ll use ATS. Even if there’s just a small chance, it’s important to make sure your resume is ATS-ready, because if it isn’t, there’s a good chance it will never make it to a human to review. Here’s what you need to do to ensure your resume makes it.

The first is to understand what ATS is. Essentially, these are artificial intelligence-driven systems which scan incoming resumes and decide whether a human should review them or whether they should be discarded. There are dozens of companies which provide them and each one is a bit different. However, there are universal principles you can apply towards beating them.

1. Create a resume in the right file format. Most ATS are designed to read two file types: .pdf and .doc (plus .docx of course). In other words, do not submit your resume as an image because it’s highly unlikely an ATS will be able to read it and so your resume is likely to get trashed immediately.
2. Make sure your file is ATS optimized. While this doesn’t apply as much to a .doc file, not all .pdfs are created equal. The way the information is structured in the file will have a huge impact on whether an ATS can effectively read it. The best strategy here is to use a resume builder which is optimized for ATS (more on that below).
3. Give the ATS what it’s looking for. Generally, an ATS will be given a set of skills and other requirements and told to only allow through resumes that meet them. That means if the ATS doesn’t understand how you phrased something, it might not think you have a critical skill you actually possess. So, be sure to phrase your skills and experience as closely to the way they’re phrased in the job description as possible. This subtle trick will boost your chances of making it through.

Even if your resume is perfectly ATS-optimized, it still needs to get approved by a person. Here’s how to make sure that happens.

Thinking about the end-client.

As mentioned above, different people reading your resume will have different expectations. A key to success is considering what those expectations will be ahead of time and carefully crafting your resume to match them.

Writing for companies, schools, or agencies

As a tutor, there’s always going to be a student at the other end of your work. However, when you’re being hired by a company, school, or agency, you’re not writing to appeal to that student. You should still focus on demonstrating that you have all the personal skills to effectively tutor that person, but also think about what the recruiter hiring you needs from you.

Are your hours flexible? How many students can you reasonably take on? How is your conflict resolution (IE, can you keep students and their parents happy), etc. These are all questions a company hiring you as a tutor will generally have, but which a parent or student hiring you won’t. Use the job description as a guide to tell you which questions to focus on, but overall your resume should be showing that you’ll make life easy for the company hiring you.

Writing for parents or students

While you probably don’t have a job description to go on in these cases, learn whatever you can about the parent or student who’ll be making the decision whether to hire you and think about what they will need from you. Do they want a tutor who’s very strict and can help the student stay disciplined? Do they want someone who’s fun and personable to make the work seem easier? In just that example you can see how these two potential clients should be seeing very different resumes from you.

One technique can be to begin with a short meeting to get a feel for what they might want from you before submitting your resume. Another would be to ask any mutual friends or acquaintances to get a sense for the person who will make the decision and their circumstances. Ultimately, a resume precisely tailored for the audience is going to have a much better chance of success.

How to format a tutor resume

Once you’ve studied your resume’s audience carefully it’s time to start writing. But the question many people come to here is formatting. Remember, your resume is a device designed to convey information. That’s its purpose. So the guiding principle for formatting is to make your resume convey information effectively.

That means using a design that enhances rather than distracts (something clean and modern is usually best). It also means putting the more important information towards the top so it’s more likely to be seen. Lastly, following that same rule, putting your experience in reverse chronological order (most recent at the top).

How long should a tutor resume be?

For an academic tutor, you should limit your resume to one page in the vast majority of cases. The exception would be if you’re tutoring a university or even a PhD student in a subject in which you have important experience. That may warrant two pages. But in the vast majority of cases, one page is sufficient to get across your relevant experience and skills as a tutor.

But why default to one page? This gets back to the importance of appealing to your audience. Whether it’s a parent hiring a tutor for their child or the hiring manager at a tutoring agency, their time is precious. They don’t want to be asked to read through pages and pages of your resume.

The rule of thumb is to only include information that adds value to your resume. You can look at each section and sentence and ask yourself “does this make my resume better?” If the answer is no, then it doesn’t belong on your resume. Use this technique to get down to one well-written and concise page and the person reading it will thank you.

Which sections should you include on a tutor resume?

• Resume objective or summary
• Work experience
• Certifications
• Achievements
• Education
• Hard skills
• Soft Skills
• Languages
• Volunteering

How to list education on an academic tutor resume

Obviously as an academic tutor, your education is extremely important. That’s why this section should be featured prominently. Then, the level of detail should depend on its relation to the tutoring that you’re doing.

For example, your education could simply be the institution, the degree you obtained, and the year you graduated. Or, if they’re relevant, you could include more details about classes, theses, etc.

BA in English

The University of Virginia

2007-2011, Charlottesville, VA

Again, put yourself in the reader’s shoes and consider what they would find useful or important to know. Chances are, the space that would be taken up with classes and other information would be better used detailing achievements, skills, or experience.

How to list additional training and certifications as a tutor

Although many people tutor part-time while doing other work, if you’re focusing more on it then you may want to consider obtaining a certification. Including one on your resume goes a long way towards showing that you take tutoring seriously and will give the work the focus it deserves. This is also a great way to stand out if you have less experience (more on that later).

When listing a certification, simply include the name of the certification, name of the organization granting it, and the year. For example:

Advanced Tutor Certification, Association for the Tutoring Profession, 2018

Tutor certification to consider obtaining and including

• American Tutoring Association ATA Tutor Certification
• Association for the Tutoring Profession Certifications (they have many depending on your experience)
• College Reading and Learning Association (there are different levels depending on your experience)
• National Tutoring Association Basic Level Tutor Certifications (there are different levels depending on your experience)

How to list your skills

As mentioned above, if your resume is likely to encounter ATS then the skills you list are incredibly important. That said, a great academic tutor resume will do more than simply list skills, it will give examples or certifications which demonstrate that you genuinely possess those skills. This is extra important for soft skills, which can seem vague and easily be ignored otherwise. Doing this will go a long way towards building confidence in your tutoring abilities. Here’s an example to illustrate the difference:

Patient

Developed patience while tutoring local high school students on the autism spectrum in reading

The second version makes it clear that you’re not simply claiming to be a patient person but that you specifically became a patient tutor through experience.

Which hard skills should be mentioned on a tutor resume?

• Anything related to the subject in which you’re tutoring
• Lesson planning
• Written and verbal assessment
• Familiarity with virtual classroom tools
• Use of tutoring platforms like tutor.com or tutorvista.com
• SAT or ACT prep
• Specific teaching styles
• Working with students who have learning challenges or disabilities

Which soft skills should be mentioned on a tutor resume?

• Patience
• Punctuality
• Communication
• Friendliness
• Dependability
• Mentoring

How to highlight your most important achievements

When it comes to tutoring achievements, examples speak louder than lists. This is particularly true when the person reading your resume is primarily concerned with your ability to get results for your students. So be sure to include specifics whether you’re describing achievements in your work experience or in a separate achievements section (which is useful if you have tutoring relevant achievements from outside of your formal work history).

Helped a student improve math scores

This achievement example is too vague to have any real impact. The improvement may have been substantial, but most people reading that sentence will dismiss it without details.

Helped a student go from a 2.8 average to a 3.7 in their Statistics 101 class within 4 months.

This example is better in a few key areas. First, obviously the specifics make it more impactful. But beyond that, being specific like this communicates that you’re detail oriented. Instead of “sure, I’ll tutor your kid” it says “I will help your child achieve specific and measurable results.” For most people looking to hire a tutor, that attitude is priceless.

What are the differences between a resume objective and summary?

Above, we recommended starting your resume off with an objective or summary, but what’s the difference and how should you choose? A resume objective is a simple sentence which gives your resume context by stating who you are and what you aim to achieve. This is better to use when your resume has a cover letter attached or doesn’t really require additional context.

A resume summary on the other hand is a short paragraph designed to go into more detail about you and your goals. This is better if there’s some aspect of you or your resume that needs more explanation. For example, if you have a gap in your work history or have unconventional experience.

How to write a resume objective (examples included)

An objective should be short and sweet.

Experienced math tutor looking to help your child achieve.

Much like the problematic examples above, the issue here is a lack of specificity. How experienced are you, what will you help their child achieve? This objective tells the reader that you didn’t take the time to personalize your resume or really consider their specific tutoring needs.

Certified math tutor with 4 years experience helping students improve their math SAT scores by an average of 30% hoping to help Sam do the same.

This example packs a lot of information into a single sentence. Right away the reader knows you’re certified, have plenty of experience, and have a record of getting results. It also tells the reader that you’ve customized this resume just for them, which shows a level of personalized attention most parents expect from an academic tutor.

How to write a resume summary (examples included)

A summary will go into more detail. For example it might also include how you prefer to work and communicate (Slack, Skype, Messenger, SMS, Dropbox, Dive, Zoom, Skype, etc.) It might also mention why you love tutoring or what methods you use to get results for your students.

I’ve been tutoring in writing for 3 years and enjoy helping my students dramatically improve their written communication skills. I get along well with my students and have often been reccomended to others by them.

This summary is a great example of what not to do. First, it’s written in the first person, which a resume summary should be written in the third person. Next, it’s still vague and leaves the reader without a strong sense of what you can achieve. Last, it makes the fatal mistake of including a spelling error. No one is going to hire an academic tutor who’s that sloppy with their resume so be sure to have a friend double check your resume for mistakes like this before you send it out.

Academic writing tutor with 3 years experience working with university students and high school seniors. Has helped students write essays that got them into Stanford and UVA. Currently pursuing an ATA Tutor Certification.

This example gets specific and uses the summary to mention a certification that they’re actively pursuing. This is a good place to mention something like that, so even if you haven’t obtained it, you’re still showing the dedication of trying.

How to write an academic tutor resume with little to no experience

If you’ve never tutored before, your resume should focus on two things: first that you have the knowledge in the relevant subject area and second, that you have the personal qualities to be a good tutor. Even if you’ve never tutored before, showing these two things will put you in serious contention.

Confidence without seeming arrogant is also key. A parent or agency won’t want to hire an inexperienced tutor who seems unsure of themself. That said, acting like you’re already a top quality tutor won’t come off well either.

How to make your resume stand out

Taken together, getting your academic tutor resume to stand out comes down to using clean, modern design and writing targeted information with your audience in mind. When it’s clear to the reader that you took the time to carefully craft this resume, they’ll feel confident that you’ll put the same dedication into your tutoring. No flashy design or big claims needed, just calm professionalism.

Why you should be using a resume builder

With so many things to get right for the perfect academic tutor resume, you need plenty of help. That’s why it makes sense to use a resume builder that can handle things like ATS optimization, great design, and a helpful platform for creating a resume for you.

If a parent gets a stack of simple Word docs and one beautifully-designed resume, you can guess which one is going to make the stronger first impression. Considering how likely it is that a parent or recruiter will stick with their first impression, getting ahead from the start with the right resume design is invaluable.

Resumebuild.com’s builder has everything you need to create an effective academic tutor resume. From template to get you started to examples that will inspire you, we make it easy for you to succeed. Try it out and see why more and more people are abandoning the old way of creating resumes for something better.