Clare – Meet The Tutor – Optimum Skills

In Clare Cruddace’s words, teaching is career number three.

Having travelled the world in her youth as a flight attendant, Clare “fell into” the world of catering and worked for several years as a chef.

Now she’s joined Optimum Skills as a Professional Services Tutor, specialising in hospitality and business.

Having spent years in the kitchen, she’s now doing prep of a different kind – preparing up to a dozen learners at a time for a potential career in hospitality.

“Like a lot of learners, I didn’t do as well as I perhaps could have when I first started school.

“I gained more qualifications in my 40s than I did as a teenager, but that also shows that it is never too late to go and get the skills or career that you’d like.

“Thankfully, when I was training to be a chef, I also had a teacher who inspired and believed in me, and they told me that they thought I could be a really good teacher.”

Yet cooking for a living wasn’t always the plan.

“I literally fell into it as my sister had her own catering business, but she fell pregnant and needed someone she could trust to run it when she was off,” said Clare.

“I had management and business experience, but my only cooking experience was from home – and then a fortnight in, I had to sack the chef. But then I realised that if I was going to be the chef, I might as well do it properly, so I went to college to study it.”

Since then, she’s spent a lot of time in college, in a career that has seen her work for other training providers, work as an assessor and even taught new mums about healthy eating.

Teaching, it seems, comes naturally – and it is something she truly loves.

She starts her day at Optimum by setting up her classroom and greeting her learners, ensuring they feel comfortable and confident.

Then the tutoring starts.

Mocktail and coffee masterclasses alongside ice breakers (including Clare’s favourite game, Quackers) – all mixed in with expert-led guidance on the front office element of hospitality.

“We look at all areas of hospitality, from kitchens and bars, to hotels and coffee shops,” she adds.

“But there are also plenty of discussions, and we check-in on our learner’s wellbeing with plenty of feedback along the way.”

That methodical approach is partially why 98.9 per cent of Optimum Skills’ apprentices passed last year.

And of course, the ultimate goal is to find work – something Clare says Optimum Skills is great at.

“The reason I do the job is the learner satisfaction. It is seeing them develop and gain the confidence they need to flourish in the workplace,” she added.

“When I hear that they have got a placement, I encourage them in the same way that I was encouraged when I was training in college to be a chef – I just tell them ‘You’ve done this – you’ve pushed yourself’.”