Since Sherpa is a student-led directory, students will always be the first to open a conversation with a tutor. For that reason, it's really important to make sure that your profile is looking as good as possible. ✨

Here, I'll go through a few of the main factors involved with promoting your profile and maximising the number of requirements you'll receive.

Your profile picture is the first thing potential students see on Sherpa, so make sure it is a good quality, clear and professional picture which clearly shows your face. Smiling also goes a long way in adding more personality and warmth to your profile.

Sometimes parents want to search through a lot of tutor profiles before deciding who to contact. A new feature we have added promises to make your profile stand out and help you portray your experience and personality in a quick introductory video right from the search results. Consider visiting the guidelines page for this video and uploading one of your own.

Your prompts are the most important factor in advertising your profile. Make sure you've written enough to get across your personality, as well as your qualifications and experience.

Make sure you fully include your qualifications (particularly if you are a qualified teacher!) and your experience. For example, how long have you been tutoring? When did you start and why? What is a recent example of how you helped impact a student's development? Give clear, enthusiastic responses that portray your personality and impact.

Captions are the first part of your profile that potential students see when searching through the "Find a Tutor" page. It's now possible to have a separate caption for each of the subjects you teach - so when someone searches for a Maths tutor, they can see a relevant short caption of your Maths credentials to convince them to click through to your full profile. Read more about how to add them here.

I often see profiles of qualified teachers or tutors with many years of experience, with very little mention of their qualifications and how long they have been teaching and tutoring! Make sure your prompts and caption quickly get that across to potential students making it one of the first things seen on your profile. You can rearrange your prompt order in your profile prompt settings here.

Aim to reply to any requirement messages promptly (under 12 hours is ideal) to make sure that potential students turn into introductions, and then bookings. This is also a ranking factor in search results.

As parents and students often message several tutors at once, the quickest response often secures the client. You can customise your notifications in the notification settings here. They are all on by default.

Once you've completed a session with a new student, don't forget to ask your student for a glowing review! These add a huge boost to your profile and are also consistently one of the main factors that potential students look at when viewing your profile.

Reviews are a huge influence on whether a student will message a tutor or not. Once you get started with a student make it a top priority to ask for a review. They can always update it later.

One of the great things about Sherpa is the fact that you set your rate! However, sometimes when getting started on the platform we may recommend that you decrease your rate slightly to get those first few students.

Once you've completed a few sessions and got some positive reviews, this goes a long way to boosting you up in the search results and getting you some more requirement messages. You can change your rate at any point in your profile settings. Read more about this here.

Brand new tutors will have done this during the application process. Students and parents feel strongly about wanting to search for a tutor with experience in a specific exam board. Add all exam boards you are confident in teaching for each relevant subject to increase visibility. Read more about how you can do this here.

Brand new tutors will have done this during the application process and some will simply write this in their profile prompts - which soon gets outdated! If you haven't already, make sure the month you started tutoring is added to your profile settings to enable the use of a dynamically updated profile badge.

That way, even without any other profile badges, reviews or Sherpa lesson statistics, your years of experience tutoring will always show up in a dedicated badge on your profile to help it stand out.

At key points, like results day or after a mock exam, your students may get in touch to let you know how their grades have improved with your help. Both the tutor and the student can report grade improvements by attaching them to a review. Read more about how you can do this here.

Grade improvements are then featured on your profile page for potential new students. This is a fantastic selling point to help potential students and their parents understand the impact you can have on the student's educational outcomes.

We allow tutors to earn a profile rankings boost by using their expertise to create useful articles and resources we share with students and parents.
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This helps us extend our organic reach with quality content while showcasing your knowledge and improving the visibility of your profile - all to help you connect with more students. Read more about how you can do this here.
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Tutors can share their engaging Sherpa profiles using the link provided on their tutor dashboard. Sharing this on their social media, forums, directories and other marketing channels will attract enquiries that can bolster your profile statistics making it more attractive to future visitors.