Hiring a tutor is an excellent way to improve. There is a "window" in your chess development between the time you are getting familiar with the basics of chess strategy to the time when you can accurately analyze your own games. This is an excellent time for the help of a tutor. My suggestions when searching for a tutor:

1. Should be at LEAST 2200 strength.
2. Has a deep love for chess. Some tutors "do it for the money". You will get more from a bonafide chess-lover.
3. If you have more than one candidate, try a lesson with each and see who you are more comfortable with.
4. If possible, ask some of the tutor's other students if they have noticed improvement in their own games. Tutoring is often expensive, and a bad teacher's advice won't stick.
5. Try to get one who is still active in tournament play.

As for being over-qualified, I don't think that is so much an issue. The real test is how well he can communicate advanced concepts to someone who has only a basic knowledge. Hopefully he will close the gap between you! Good Luck!

I suspect you may be making too many pawn moves in the opening....something you want to avoid not only because your opponent will bypass you in development, pawn moves create weaknesses.....and if you are making too many, you will have holes in your position that you may never recover from. Another possibility is you may be moving the same piece around and thus giving your opponent extra time to develop. Bringing out your queen to early is a good example of that, where one side makes one developing move after another that attacks the queen and bounces her around the board like a ball in a pinball game. Here are some good rules to live by in the opening:

1. Open with a central pawn, and try to limit pawn moves to three or so.
2. Develop Knights before Bishops.
3. Develop your pieces toward the center.
4. Castle early.
5. Avoid moving the same piece twice.
6. Try to determine as early as possible where the middlegame battle is likely to take place, and develop a suitable plan around this.
7. Be careful when exchanging.....try to determine if certain exchanges (especially bishops) will leave you weak on certain squares. This is a weakness it is hard to recover from.

Remember, the goal of the opening is to reach a playable middlegame! Thus, the key to improving your opening play is often to study middlegame positions!