Fidelity Investments reviews

I was in a 1 year training program for the Financial Consultant role while completing my CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification. I was told I needed to sell more insurance, annuities, and managed accounts in order to continue on as a Financial Consultant. I was let go as soon as I hit the 1 year mark, shortly after I became a CFP® professional. I had told HR that I was pregnant when I became concerned about losing my job and asked to be considered for a different role within Fidelity (since I knew I would not be able to interview and start another job at 7 months pregnant). After I was let go by my manager, I reached back out to HR and they were not even aware that my employment was being terminated. Everyone I dealt with at Fidelity was extremely insensitive to the fact that this would cause a huge amount of stress to me and my family at a time that stress had serious potential health risks to myself and my baby. I ended up being unemployed for close to 9 months. I was interviewing for new jobs while also taking care of a newborn and paying extremely high premiums for health insurance for my family. Only 23% of CFP professionals are women, and only about 15% of financial advisors are women. Even though Fidelity touts its family values and culture, I would not recommend Fidelity to women based on my experience.

Honestly there are a lot of cons. I'll start with pay. The pay is definitely below market value. It's a hot economy and Fidelity openly admits that it pays less because the compensation is weighed more towards benefits. The problem is the benefits here aren't all that great. For example it takes 5 years to get vested in your 401k and a year before you are eligible for any match from the company. This may have been more impressive a few years ago, but many companies will vest you day 1 or within the first year of employment along with a match. Career advancement is slim to none for new associates. They have a career center on campus to help provide options for career growth, but the positions just aren't very attractive (phone work and processing work for various business units) and the level of effort to get those jobs is the same as just applying and interviewing for an outside role. There are too many hoops to jump through to move up within the company and honestly most people are in entry level roles for years before they move onto something else. Do you want to guarantee that you make entry level pay for years in this economy? The biggest con is definitely the work itself. I worked in a phone role in PI and it was without a doubt the worst professional experience I've ever had. Imagine having to describe something you hated day in and day out with a character limit. This is my dilemma. The job is ultimately a burnout job. You take 50-60 calls a day while processing requests in customer's accounts. There are numerous challenges whether it is explaining complex trading strategies to people, helping an 80 year old log into Fidelity.com and locating documents, telling a customer you cannot recommend specific stocks to them, calming down an angry customer cussing at you. It goes on and on. This isn't to mention challenges related to technology or hold times within departments. You're getting hit from all sides and will disappoint a lot of customers with Fidelity's policies (and lack of exceptions). The worst part of this job is knowing you did it and didn't build any meaningful experience to add to your resume. You never get to think for yourself or lead any sort of project since you're always on the assembly line. I would advise strongly against working here.