This first part only applies to those interested in getting into tech, so skip ahead if that is not you. Fidelity offers a non-tech to tech training program called Fidelity MADE, which sounds nice on paper and lures many to the company, however it is poorly run and if you do not check the right diversity boxes, you have no chance. It does not matter if you have a bachelors in computer science from a major state university, previous experience with the technologies they use, if you have had previous technical internships, if you have gotten a 100 on your first attempt on the pre-test, none of it matters because the number one thing they care about is satisfying a diversity requirement. Even the recruiter in charge complained that those running the program made them interview everyone that applied regardless of their qualifications and it set them back heavily. Ultimately it took them three and half months to send out rejection letters, a full month behind their schedule. When you get rejected its just a canned rejection letter that tells you to apply next time and continue practicing your technical skills, which is a joke because the interviews barely touch on anything technical and just a bunch of fluff, tell me about a time questions over and over, I suspect they did this so they could justify hiring blatantly under qualified individuals. This was not just me but several candidates with similar qualifications, the only similarity, our demographic. I wasted a full year before I could apply to MADE, practiced with the technologies in my free time and did everything I could do to prepare but it all was for nothing. If you want to break into tech this is not the way to do it. Future of work - They act like they are geniuses for coming up with the concept of hybrid work. There is no reason to have to go into the office when we worked perfectly fine remotely for over a year, but the billionaire boomer CEO thinks it is a great idea. At first it started as just three days every four weeks but then became five days every four weeks. I suspect they are going to go one week on and one week remote in the future but probably want to wait till after tax season so they can stomach the loss of staff better. The worst part about hybrid work is all the people who are only pay grades 1 or 2 can't generally afford to live near campus, so they have to drive, many well over an hour each way without traffic but all the higher ups do not have a problem with it because they get paid enough to afford decent housing near campus. Pay - The pay is mediocre and below industry standard. It is widely talked about how you can go to any competitor in the industry and make more money but the managers have to remind you how great the benefits are. I went up a pay grade and got to cost of living adjustments during my tenure and I barely noticed a difference. Schedule- Like working 8-5, well too bad because after training you will be moved to shift bid. You will be lucky to get anything before your 5th choice. The shifts start as early as 5am and go as late as 11pm so it is more than likely you will end up working odd hours. Tech Support - Fidelity's internal tech team is almost impossible to reach and it can take up to an hour to reach them, the digital tools that you have can be pretty hit or miss and some of them will just stop working randomly, so it would be great to be able to reach them. Also they are incompetent, when you leave the company make sure to get a receipt for your returned equipment because they will be hounding you to return it even though you already did. Client Obsessed - The company likes to say how client obsessed they are but I found this a joke. Very rarely does anyone at the company actually go above and beyond for the client, they mostly just tell you to let the client know you can't do something. Most of the people at the company are too worried about covering their butt rather than actually doing the right thing. Also it does not matter how great you are with the clients and how great your client survey scores are because how do you get promoted? By having enough calls per hour and if you are even a little under that, you are not getting promoted. You are incentivized to get the client off the phone as quickly as possible and if they don't complain it is good enough. Also I love how they say how client obsessed they are but this is the same company that is actively discouraging the use of mail in favor of digital, the clients who stuck with the company for a half century and helped build it into the billion dollar juggernaut today might not want to use a computer and they should not have to go through a lot of hopes to do so. It really won't even be a problem in about a decade since most of the clients that really care about the mail are in their twilight years. Promotions - The promotions are a joke when it comes to pay, you might get like a 5% bump in pay and a chance to make some more in bonuses. Also for auto promotions they only hire in certain departments randomly so if there is a department you want you will have to keep qualifying for them every single month and hope they are hiring that month and also hope you don't get a trade error because then you are disqualified for that month. Most people just take the first department they are offered rather than going through that. Any off phone openings are crazy competitive, they may have two spots open and get over 60 applicants because most people hate their phone role, so if you want off the phone good luck. Tax Season - During tax season, Feb-April you will be non stop busy and as soon as you hang up the phone another one comes in. I have worked in a restaurant for a long time and I was more physically exhausted after this job during the busy season than an active job like that. After spending all day talking to clients you just want to just sit there and do nothing and not talk to anyone, it is the most emotional and mentally draining time. Anxiety- Almost all your co-workers will talk about how much anxiety they feel all the time. This is not during the first few weeks either, we are talking about people who had been there for well over a year. The Sunday Scaries are real and you will probably get them bad. I ended up having to go on prescription medicine to help manage my anxiety and only got off as soon as I left the job. FINRA regulations - This one is not about Fidelity in particular but about the industry as a whole, FINRA regulations are very strict and require you to give a lot of personal information and limit outside business activities and amount of trading you can do in a quarter. Onboarding - The onboarding process takes forever with Fidelity and is pretty messy. The recruiter told me I had to get drug tested within a couple days but the place they wanted me to use was appointment only and did not have any openings during that time frame. Luckily they were able to reschedule but it was very inconvenient to have to panic that I wasn't going to have a job because I could not get the drug test done in time. Recruiters- Some recruiters straight up lie about the job and what it entails, one of them told my coworker that they mostly would be answering emails. The truth is it is a call center and we are not even able to email clients. How the job is advertised - Fidelity makes a big deal of being a financial professional and how you are going to have a series 7 job. The truth is it is a call center and you are going to feel like you work in retail more than working in finance, especially because you are going to be working retail hours most likely after you are done with training. There is a reason most of the people they hire have no financial background and come from retail jobs. The job itself - All this and I never even mentioned what the actual job is like , the truth is it is torture. One co-worker said it best when he said this job should be banned by the Genova convention, not only did I agree, I used those exact words to describe it to other people before. Surprisingly the clients themselves are not too bad and you even get some pretty pleasant and grateful clients but the job is a grind. Not only is everything you do monitored and recorded, it makes it difficult because you never know when the next call is going to come in. The best way to describe the job is like helping your grandma with her online banking details over the phone all day every day. Many of the people are technologically illiterate and almost everything has to be done on their end digitally. The simplest tasks like password resets and adding banking details can easily take over 40 minutes and wreck your stats. Also if you have to reach out to other departments many times they don't want to take the call from you or it can take a very long time to reach them. I have had to wait over an hour for the fraud department to fix simple issues, obviously the client is mad when you get back and the whole time your stats get destroyed. Many departments like fraud and transition services are chronically understaffed and as soon as you get a call that needs them you know you are not going to have a good time. As the client facing member of the team you are going to have to break a lot of bad news and hear some pretty tough situations. If you like waiting on hold and calling your bank's customer service, this is the job for you. Miscellaneous - The same time they required people to go into the office, they canceled the $10 lunch credit, I don't expect to get free food but the food was only worth it if it was free and I thought it was classless to cancel it at the same time as forcing people into the office more. Also no money for bonuses but a few days later we find out they are going to give a quarter billion dollars to underserved students. They virtue signal about diversity but the tech department is the least diverse place that I have ever seen. Wrap Up - Ask yourself why a company that has such "great" benefits, that brags about being voted a top place to work, has to spend so much on recruitment ads. The truth is it is a low paying call center and for every success story you see, there are dozens that washed out.
