Pros
Fidelity at large is a good company to start your career in, there are great people at the firm always willing to lend a hand and offer career help and connections. Different from other financial services companies, Fidelity doesn't work its employees all day and night so you'll have a social life and get sleep. I joined Fidelity after college as a part of the Emerging Leader Program - a new 18-month rotational program for college graduates based in New England. The program pros are: - Exposure to senior leadership: many 1:1's with VP's, SVP's and executives once in a while - Opportunity to travel: ad hoc and there is a trip ELP plans to tour the different Fidelity sites - Working new jobs/roles: you won't get bored for too long since you are rotating every few months - Comradery: You do the program with other new college grads and you build a great comradery and makes the experience fun as well as gives you great new friends. - Connections: different from networking, you will meet great individuals along the path that will be sincerely great mentors, rotational managers, and friends at the firm.
Cons
Though the Emerging Leader Program was designed to allow liberal arts graduates to learn about financial services in an "elite" program, it has its severe downfalls and ultimately I do not recommend this program to anyone considering starting their career with ELP. My cons are as follows: - Commuting: for New England based associates, you are expected to travel to your assigned rotations in either RI, NH, or Boston. These assignments are chosen subjectively by your manager, and you do not know up until 3 or so weeks before your rotation begins. Though you can express interest in rotations that are based in Boston, NOTHING is ever certain or clear, you may be left surprised at your unsatisfying assignment. Not everyone in the program will get assigned a rotation that requires 2+ hours of driving so you may be a part of the unlucky few that is left to drive into the woods for a dark 4 months. You cannot log your miles driven so you do not get reimbursement for gas, the low compensation does not help cushion the cost either. - Rotation assignments: The program gives associates three 4-month long rotations in different business units within fidelity. If you have an interest in a certain group - finance, strategy, personal investing, etc. there is no certainty that you will be able to work with them as the rotations are assigned by topics - operations, product, and data analytics (which they don't even stick to half the time so it's unorganized). The way these are assigned are subjectively your manager who you share your interests with but they ultimately decide where you will go. You may be left unhappy and confused at what you are assigned and the lack of skills developed in 4 months. Management hammers into you to "trust the process" but I caution you not to. The lack of structure to how placements are assigned is the single biggest downfall of the program since final placement is correlated to the work experience you have or haven't been able to build in the past 18 months. - Compensation: the comp is way too low for an "elite" program and compared to similar programs at other firms!! - Diversity and Inclusion: though efforts are being made to advanced inclusion in the firm and program at wide, don't expect Fidelity to be as socially aware as your liberal arts college. You'll find people with similar social consciousness but as a firm they still have a ways to go - though sincere efforts are being made, culture changing is slow at a large firm. This lack of D&I inevitably trickles down to ELP management and the decisions made so enjoy :). I see the program thriving in 5-10 years when large structural changes have been made (which are being considered to be transparent). TO BE CLEAR - most of my feedback is for ELP and not Fidelity at large, there are great parts of the firm that are healthy and great career drivers that I would highly recommend.