Get yourself a job as the right hand person to a top level company director and slide sideways into a management role yourself?
Seems a good plan, but how feasible is it?
Shilpa Wymer, Principal of Holborn Training, which offers the Pitman Training course along with 70 other Pitman programmes in London and Manchester reckons it’s an obvious way to advance your career.
She claims that students can start off by training to become the personal assistant to a senior person and then let the employer know that you also have management skills.
Her feeling is that this is a credible approach for younger people who don’t have the best recognised degrees.
“The way I would approach it is to gain the advanced secretarial skills included in the diploma programme and then take 4 of our online management courses as your four compulsory elective subjects.
Even before graduating with your diploma, I’d start applying for PA roles and highlight my management selections at interview, so they’d know you have your eye on the big prize, a career in management. After all, if you’re already working with people at the top level, you have the chance to tell them about your other skills when an opportunity comes up.”
Is there any evidence that this approach works? Mrs Wymer again:
“We have so many PA success stories where our former students have moved in all kinds of directions. I have a former house sitter who now works for a UK law firm in Paris, a girl who took her PA diploma with web design skills to a construction firm and many more.”
“Our online management courses are relatively new so I’m waiting to hear about how they translate into career opportunities but I’m confident they will.”
Creating an obtuse approach to career development is just one of a number of ways in which Holborn Training is different.
The organisation prides itself on using the Pitman Training method to deliver a completely flexible timetabling method, so students can start a course at any time and study at times to suit them, whether in the daytime, evenings or Saturdays or a mixture of all these.
That means students can gain a qualification even if they can’t attend the institute on a regular basis.
But as there is also a Pitman Training diploma called “Introduction To Management,” why recommend the Executive PA Diploma?
Principal Shilpa Wymer: “I’m absolutely in love with our management diploma but currently our focus is on getting people into work and the fact is, there are more jobs available to PA’s than to more general management students. Our “sideways approach” to getting into management is a well- targeted option which I believe gives the under-25’s a better chance of getting into the top jobs. It’s also a less well-worn path than the traditional milk round.”
She may well have a point. With youth unemployment at record levels, you either need a 1st class degree from a top university to start a management career or a completely different approach.
“And in a worst case, anyone completing an Executive PA course will have transferrable skills such as typing and Microsoft Office which are useful in any office work environment, even if the student doesn’t land a job as a top PA,” adds Principal Wymer.
Earning an Executive PA diploma with management subjects is also relatively inexpensive when compared to a university degree in management studies, according to Principal Wymer:
“The price and duration of our Executive PA course will depend on whether you qualify for exemptions from the core modules for existing knowledge and also on your choices of the four elective management modules, but you’re typically looking in the region of £3000-£5000.00 and we even have payment plans to help you spread the cost.”
To find out whether this approach to career training is right for you, just call Holborn Training at any of their locations:
London Notting Hill – 020 7792 5214
London High Holborn – 020 7025 4700
Manchester – 0161 923 6814
