You most certainly do not have to go through a company, but there may be advantages to doing so, depending on the company (naturally). As far as I know about posting things up on the walls, you can just ask someone who works in the building about it - you definitely can't throw flyers up wherever you want, so ask! You should have little trouble learning their policies about this kind of advertising.
You will probably want a website and an email devoted to information about your private tutoring qualifications and services, so you can lead people to more information. Once you get a few clients, word-of-mouth should carry you into more than enough clients to keep you busy (unless you fail with your first few, in which case you're in for a long fight).
Tutoring has been a lot of fun for me personally, and I'm training with [a company] to become an MCAT/DAT teacher and later a tutor.
Breakdown of pros n cons:
Freelance
Pros:
- More flexibility. Set your own hours, your own rate, your own meeting place, what have you. Big advantage for most people.
- Charge your own rate. This is a pro and a con; sometimes you'll feel like you're being ripped off, sometimes you'll feel like you're gouging. It's hard to ask for the right amount.
- Keep the money you earn. You don't have to shell out big bucks for a company to handle your scheduling, conflicts, whatever. If you're comfortable dealing with all this stuff on your own, you keep the profits.
Cons:
- More work. As stated above, as a private tutor, you will field scheduling changes, your own finances, your own taxes, your own advertising, your own course plans... This is taken care of for you at a company.
- Less of a "Resume Builder" or "Opportunity Maker". Reasonable or not, it is my belief that few people have much respect for small unknown companies or freelancers. As a quick test... Who would you rather hire (ignore price)? A certified Princeton Review or Kaplan qualified DAT tutor, or a guy on Craigslist who got a 23AA?
- Often very slow to start. It's hard to land those first few clients, and you'll probably end up working for less than you dream about. It can also start out of nowhere and mushroom very fast, but from what I've seen, this is much less likely owing to a lot of competition and very, very few ways to actually differentiate yourself from the millions of other 3.5+ GPA, 20+ DAT, A+ in Organic Chemistry students trying to tutor.
Company
Pros:
- Resume Builder. People at [the company i work at] often move into higher positions, or take freelancing on the side. Since [the company] is a national brand name, most/many people know and respect it somewhat, rather than "Random Tutors Inc." or "Freelance Tutor".
- Qualifications and Support. You will be trained under the company curriculum, which will grant you the mixed blessing of Professionalism. Sometimes when teaching freelance it's difficult to stick to any sort of plan, and difficult to know what to do when you're at your wits end. As a company tutor you have someone to turn to if you need help teaching the material to a particularly difficult student.
- More money for your effort. Look at it pragmatically. As a freelancer, you do your own scheduling, handle personality conflicts, field e-mails, and deal with a lot more "casualness" than you will as a [well-known company] professional tutor. This is all completely unpaid frustration. As a company tutor, you get paid for your training, paid for your prep work, you have the option to work on-site, and can start at a very good rate. Yes, you might be able to charge a few clients 45+ for an hour of tutoring as a freelancer, but that 45$ is also (hiddenly) paying for the unseen extra time you're putting in.
Cons:
- Application. You often have to go through a process to be trained as a tutor. This can be long and involved; training ended up taking me 3 months.
- Bad companies. You should really sign up for a big name company, because the little ones will just end up taking a chunk of change and do nothing for you. I had a bad experience with a company like this in the past. BE CAREFUL.
- Rigid structuring. At my company, I have to stick to a curriculum, and have to plug for the company. This isn't as obnoxious as it sounds, but I'm not allowed to deviate from the curriculum/methods very much or at all. If you want to be the eccentric brilliant tutor, you'll have to save it for freelancing.
One thing to keep in mind is that even as I am working for a company, I'm going to be looking for freelance work to fill in the gaps. As long as you don't get trapped by a Noncompete Agreement (READ CAREFULLY!), you can do both company and private work, for a maximally filled schedule and maximally large paychecks 🙂 For example, I can't tutor the MCAT privately, since I'm doing that for [the company]. I can, however, teach subject-based sciences; I just can't legally do test-based subject tutoring, and of course I can't use company materials and methods.
If you have any more questions after that long long rant, please feel free to message me. My experience is not extensive, but I've done a lot of analysis on the tutoring situation and how to make the most of it.
Good luck out there!
