Series 7 Tutor Materials – Hiring a Series 7 Tutor

Ideally, a Series 7 Tutor should have their own materials for the exams they teach. I’m a bit surprised when I hear that some 7 series tutors don’t have their own materials. I have spent the last several years developing materials for the Series 7 exam and other licensing exams. It takes a lot of work, but being a Series 7 tutor and a tutor for other licensing exams is my full time job.

I’m not even sure how you can hold meetings online if you’re using another prep vendor’s materials.

How would you show students the content? When I hold online meetings, I share a presentation with students through screen sharing. If the student and I are working on practice problems, the student sees my file that contains practice problems. I created nearly 1000 questions for the Series 7 exam and other licensing exams. If I am teaching the content for the Series 7 exam from a presentation, the student is watching my presentation.

I don’t think it’s appropriate to show up to a meeting with a book written by some other prep provider. It also looks a bit weird to be reading a book. The student can read the book on his own. Whenever I am interested in hiring a Series 7 tutor, I strongly encourage you to create your own materials. There is also another problem here: does the tutor have the approval to use the materials from another preparation provider?

When hiring a Series 7 tutor or tutor for any other licensing exam, you need to ask several questions as listed below:

1. Have you passed the Series 7 exam and what score did you receive? If the tutor can’t remember the score, it probably wasn’t very high. You should look to work with someone who passed the exam with a high score. If the series 7 tutor passed with a 73, that person may not know almost 30% of the material.

2. Do you usually work with cycle 7 students? If the tutor doesn’t regularly help people with a particular test, that person may not be able to help you much. You should also ask about the number of years the tutor has been teaching the content on the particular exam.

3. Do you have investment experience in the content you are teaching? Real world experience is very important. How would a Series 7 mentor help people with referrals if that mentor has never had a referral job?

4. What are your academic qualifications? The series 7 tutor must have extensive investment experience. Having a bachelor’s and/or postgraduate degree in finance would be a good foundation. While a tutor does not need to be a certified financial planner or be a CFA certification holder, these designations show that a tutor has successfully gone through financial programs that are quite challenging.