A sneak peek at your tutor assessment

So you’ve been invited to the assessment stage of our interview process – that’s great news! We know that might seem a little daunting, so we wanted to remove all mystery and give you an insight into what the assessment involves and what we think you need to know to ace it. We’ve even included a sneak peek of some of the questions that will come up!

Why would we give you all this information? We want you to have every opportunity to do your best and show us your potential!

What does the assessment involve?

The assessment is entirely online and is made up of two parts:

Part one

Part one is a multiple-choice test that includes five maths and five English questions, all of which are content that would be covered in the national curriculum/entrance exams course up to key stage three. We suggest that for most candidates this part of the assessment will take around 20 minutes, however you won’t be limited and can take as long as you need to complete it. If you applied for the GCSE maths tutor role, your test will consist of only seven maths questions at GCSE level.

Part two

Part two is an online pre-recorded video interview which means that it won’t be live and so you’ll have the freedom to complete it at a time that suits you best. There will be two questions for most candidates, and three questions for those who have applied for our GCSE maths tutoring role (we’ve shared the questions later in the blog). Altogether, we think this part of the assessment will take around ten minutes to complete, however you can take as long as you like to prepare your answers to each question, and then you’ll have two or three minutes to record your responses to each question. You can also retake each of your responses up to 3 times!

Why do we ask candidates to complete this assessment?

There’s only so much that we can learn from an application! Although we’re not able to invite everyone to have a live one to one interview with us, we want to give as many of our candidates as possible the opportunity to show us why they would be great for the role. The maths and English test shows us your working knowledge of the curriculum right now, while the video interview allows you to demonstrate your passion, communication style, and overall suitability for the role.

Our tutor role also involves a high level of responsibility that comes with working with children, so it’s important that we take care to assess people’s suitability and professionalism to a higher degree than some other part-time roles. Altogether, the assessment helps us to make a much more informed decision about who we’d like to invite to the final stage of the application process.

Question: Tell us why you want to become and maths and English tutor

In your response, we’d love to see your passion shine through! There are no right answers to this question, we're mainly interested to hear about why you’re looking to work in this industry, with children, and specifically at Explore Learning. The impact that our people make on our members is what we’re most proud of, so we’d love to hear why you would like to be a part of that with us.

Question: Talk us through the steps you might take with Zainab (aged 10) to tackle the maths problem. We’re looking for you to demonstrate how you will engage her and support her through the question. Feel free to use any resources to help you demonstrate your tutoring ability.

The skills that we’re looking for in your response to this question can be broken down into four key areas:

• Communication: we’re looking for you to show that you’re an inspiring communicator who will be able to engage our members - that means lots of smiles and showcasing a warm interaction from your welcome, to when you check Zainab’s understanding at the end.

• Role modelling: Try to put yourself in the member’s shoes and use questioning to help them break down the question into more manageable chunks.

• Resilience: showcase that you’re in it together and it’s okay to make mistakes – even if you make a mistake yourself! If you show that you’re confident that you can get to the answer together, the student will feel that way too.

• Questioning: Think about what questions you can ask to support them through the question, rather than simply telling them the answer. What can you ask about their prior knowledge that might help them with the next step?

Top tips ahead of your assessment:

• We’re looking for potential, not perfection. We all make mistakes and fumble our words, so we’ll be expecting you to as well in your video interview! We’d like you to act as normal as possible, and it shows great resilience to keep going after making a mistake.

• In the video interview, while you prepare to answer the question, jot down some notes of things you would like to mention so that you can refer back while recording if your mind goes blank. We’ll be looking for you to speak naturally to showcase your communication style, so please don’t read from a script, but having reminders of what you want to cover can be useful to help you relax and feel confident.

• There’s no need to revise for the maths and English test, however if you’re feeling nervous about this part of the assessment then websites like BBC bitesize are a great resource that cover national curriculum content.

• Remember that recording a video interview might feel a bit silly, but our recruitment team watch hundreds of them every day across all our vacancies, so we promise that you won’t look silly to us at all.

We hope you’re feeling more prepared and ready to nail your tutor assessment! We wish you the best of luck and if you have any questions for our team, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at careers@explorelearning.co.uk.