By Michael A Weiss
A Series 7 Tutor should ideally have their own materials for the exams that they teach. It is a little surprising to me when I hear that some series 7 tutors do not have their own materials. I have spent the past 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 tutor for other licensing exams is my full time job.
I am not even sure how you can do online meetings if you are using another prep provider's materials.
How would you show the students the content? When I conduct online meetings, I share a presentation with students via screen sharing. If the student and I are working on practice problems, the student sees my file containing practice problems. I have created close to 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 looking at my presentation.
I do not think it is appropriate to show up to a meeting with a book written by some other prep provider. It also looks a little weird to be reading from a book. The student can read the book on their own. Whenever I am interested in hiring a series 7 tutor, I highly encourage them to create their own materials. There is also another issue here: does the tutor have the approval to be using another prep provider's materials?
When hiring a series 7 tutor or tutor for any other licensing exam, you should ask several questions as detailed below:
1. Have you passed the series 7 exam and what score did you receive? If the tutor can't remember the score, it was probably was not 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 regularly work with series 7 students? If the tutor does not regularly help people with a particular exam, that person might not be able to help you very much. You should also inquire about the number of years that the tutor has been teaching the content on the particular exam.
3. Do you have investment experience in the content that you are teaching? Real world experience is very important. How would a series 7 tutor help people with recommendations if that tutor has never had a job making recommendations?
4. What are your academic qualifications? The series 7 tutor should have a deep background in investments. Having an undergraduate degree and/or a graduate in finance would serve as a good background. While a tutor does not need to be a certified financial planner or be a CFA charterholder, these designations show that a tutor has successfully gone through financial programs that are rather challenging.
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