How to become a GMAT teacher / tutor

Dear Darmody,
I'm happy to respond.

First of all, congratulations on your impressive GMAT performance.

Here's the tricky thing. What does it take to be a good teacher? Well, that's hard to say. Certainly, having expertise in the subject is necessary, but it's not sufficient. There are many folks who know a ton about specific academic fields (math, physics, chemistry, linguistics, etc. ) but are absolutely horrible teachers because they are not effective at communicating what they know in a way that is accessible for others. Without knowing anything about you, I would have no idea about what your talents for teaching might be.

As to your more general questions about the industry. Traditionally, all classes were physical-location, on-site classes --- the older companies (Kaplan, Princeton Review, MGMAT, etc.) all began with that model and still primarily employ it. In our modern interconnected worlds, companies that are 100% web-based (such as Magoosh) are becoming more and more popular, because they are typically cheaper and equally accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Most companies, both web-based and on-site, will hire folks part time: in fact, many times, it's hard to start out with a full-time job at such a company, so the fact that you only want something part-time is good. For the companies that have on-site classes in a physical location, you have to be close that location, but for a web-based company, you could be anywhere in the world. It's not necessary to have an MBA: most GMAT experts don't. I don't have an MBA, but I had twenty years of teaching and tutoring experience before starting to work at Magoosh. If you have never ever done any kind of tutoring or teaching before, you might want to start small, maybe with a few private clients, and build experience before applying with a company. If you charge some very low price (say $10 or $20/hr), then you no doubt will get a few clients who want to work with you, and you can get a sense of how being a tutor feels as well as a sense of how successful you are at it. You would have a much much better chance to land a job with a company if you could approach one, say a year from now, saying, "I have done all this private tutoring, and here are recommendations from my students saying what a wonderful teacher I am." That, combined with a high GMAT score, would open a lot of doors!

Does all this make sense?
Mike