What chance of getting a job afterwards
We can’t guarantee a job. Nobody can. Any course that claims to do so is not telling the truth. But we have a tremendous record. In winter 2005, four of the intake finished the course in mid-March with full-time jobs. All came about as a result of our contacts or influence. In summer 2006, 11 of 12 people had jobs within eight weeks of the course ending. Even the one that wasn't working had been offered a job. In summer 2007 almost half of our reporters were offered jobs before the course ended.

These jobs are rarely advertised. (We reckon that 75 per cent of the jobs that our graduates find are never advertised.)

You have to know who is looking for staff. We hear of many of these jobs because our day-to-day work is training journalists from the magazine industry at all levels, right up to publishers and editors. We pass this information on to you, and where we have strong contacts, we’ll put in a word for you.

Getting that first job
Those who have already tried to enter journalism, whether newspapers or magazines, will have learnt that a degree is not a passport to a job.
Don’t worry if you haven’t got a degree. Don’t worry if your degree is not in English, media studies, politics or sociology. In fact, a less common qualification such as medicine, architecture, business studies or horticulture can be a real benefit.

The magazine industry is so diverse that it is always on the lookout for those with specialist skills, especially in the sciences.

Where do people get their first job?
Over the years, people who trained with PMA secured first jobs on a wide range of titles. They include Angling Times; Architects’ Journal; BBC Holidays; Building; Cage and Aviary Birds; Chat; Daily Telegraph; Diver; FHM; Girl About Town; Hayter’s; Horticulture Week; Jewish Chronicle; Lloyd’s List; Marketing; Middle East Economic Digest; PR Week; The Press Association; Raw!; Radio Times; Real; Screen International; Take a Break; Television SW; Total Style; World Entertainment Network News; Woman's Weekly and even Health and Efficiency!

What help do I get with the course is over?

• We email you with any vacancies we hear about;

•  We ask editors to let us know about any forthcoming vacancies;

•  We’re available for career advice;

•  We contact editors on your behalf if you’re applying for a position;

• We supply you with references;

• Our media centre is open for you to use the facilities (reference books; phones, computers, photocopying, the internet)

• We’ll look at stories you’ve written after the course has finished, and show you ways to improve them.

What will my first job entail?
Almost certainly, you’ll be writing mostly news and doing some editing and proof-reading, with the occasional feature thrown in. It’s extremely unlikely that you will find a job that is pure feature writing. That’s why a large part of our course is taken up with news-writing and sub-editing, though you’ll spend a week writing features and you’ll probably write at least five features during the nine weeks.

Can I be just a feature writer?
You can, but the journalist most valuable to today's magazines is an all-rounder (the trendy term is multi-skilling). This means that at starter level, magazine editors don’t want someone who only writes features or news. They will want you to be able to edit an article, write a headline for it, proof-read the text, design it into a page and put it onto a website.

Our course reflects the importance of these all-round skills — enhancing your prospects of a full-time job. Specialist feature-writing jobs are quite rare, and the ones on the glam magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, FHM and Fourfourtwo even more so. Nearly all the latter work is increasingly carried out not by staff people, but by highly experienced freelancers.

What about freelancing ?
No reason why not. The trouble is that freelance work comes from contacts, and you acquire contacts best of all from working on a publication, and covering an industry or an area for a couple of years. It can be done. But you have no track record. Editors don’t know who you are. They would rather give freelance work to a safe pair of hands with a proven track record, rather than a newcomer who only has a few cuttings to show. Editors tend not to take risks, however enthusiastic you are. They have learnt the hard way that it all too often ends up costing them money.

We expect most people from our course to earn some money by freelancing after the course. Only a few will make enough to live comfortably on it. One example was a woman who was often earning more than £1,000 a week with freelance work. But she had a specific medical skill, and had worked as a nurse. For those with more general skills, especially those desperate to work on music or film magazines, we advise against this until you have built up enough contacts — not just with the industry, but with editors too.

I want to work in an area that interests me, like music/travel/sport. What are my chances?
Unfortunately, these are the most popular areas of the magazine business, and they are where everybody wants a job. Most magazines in these sectors don’t employ journalists straight from a course. These tend to be your second or third jobs -- if you’re lucky. It doesn’t mean you can’t get a job on Heat, Autocar, Glamour or the Sunday Times Magazine. In fact, we’ll teach you how to secure those sort of jobs. But it probably won’t be your first move. You have to prove yourself first.