Charles Schwab Reviews in Phoenix, AZ

Former Employee – worked at Charles Schwab full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Benefits in line with industry norms. Conservatively run, but stable company to work for.

Cons – The atmosphere is quite political, you're not really allowed to have an opinion on anything. A healthy questioning of authority figures and their decisions is certainly not tolerated.

They don't like to promote people if they can avoid doing so, but if you do intend to advance, you will need to know the manager. It's an extremely nepotistic environment. As I mentioned, the company is managed conservatively, so don't expect an above average starting salary, or a massive raise every year.

The company does not require a pre-employment drug screening of job applicants. For this reason, not all of your co-workers will be consummate professionals.

Advice to Senior Management – Start paying market rates, and start drug screening new applicants. If you pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys. It's not difficult.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Charles Schwab full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Intelligent, smart people. Great corporate culture. Opportunities for learning new skills.

Cons – Most perm employees tend to be overworked, so life/work balance becomes difficult. Pay tends to be lower than industry. Tends to hire from outside rather than promote from within.

Advice to Senior Management – Continue all the great things you do to encourage employees to stay but add internal promotions and raises to the list.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Charles Schwab full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Diverse culture, Higher then average pay, collaborative environment, employee focused with emphasis on growth development.

Cons – Long hours attributed to staffing issues.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Charles Schwab full-time for less than a year

Pros – People are friendly and professional.

Cons – For an entry-level position into investments, dealing with client accounts and money, I would expect the training at Schwab to be more complete. My training was about two-weeks, with a different trainer almost every day, and the trainers didn't follow or utilize the training book as often as I would expect. By the time training was over, I didn't receive a lot of support, and felt like it was sink or swim for me.

Advice to Senior Management – Regardless of what role someone is being hired for, ensure to provide complete and detailed training.

Former Employee – worked at Charles Schwab

Pros – Great place to learn the industry & get your Series 7/63 licenses
Pretty strong emphasis on training & equipping staff to handle wide variety of issues
For aggressive traders, learning Street Smart software was a great perk

Cons – Felt very micro-managed
Very quickly got burned out taking 80-110+ phone calls a day
Choosing to go the Active Investor route led to harder phone calls, less business leads uncovered, and ultimately stunted my progress

Advice to Senior Management – Be careful of the metrics you use to measure your staff - instead of letting individuals focus on their strengths, one bad survey can absolutely ruin your career advancement & force talent to pursue jobs elsewhere

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Charles Schwab

Pros – Opportunity to grow and obtain additional experience and licenses.

Cons – Salary is very low. Difficult to achieve additional salary as overtime is limited and reps are not paid any commissions.

Advice to Senior Management – Allow employees to give feedback without tracking comments to individual managers.

Current Employee – been working at Charles Schwab

Pros – --Flexible working with option to telecommute
--Best Benefit package, 401k matching and health
--very friendly colleagues
--no micro management
--stock options

Cons – --technology not consistent across departments
--direction from leadership is missing
--interaction among different team is absent
--average skill among senior employees
--you will hardly learn anything from senior employees
--positions based on seniority not skills

Advice to Senior Management – --give strategic leadership
--encourage managing directors to update themselves with new technology
--reduce redundancy among some team. try to consolidate

Former Employee – worked at Charles Schwab

Pros – Employee culture was very positive and generally everyone was good at their jobs and smart about their area of focus. Very interesting technology and a great place to learn and experience large complex IT infrasturcture.

Cons – The company has some business challenges as the brokerage competition is very strong and trading volumes are lower then they were in the .com days.

Advice to Senior Management – none.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Charles Schwab

Pros – Easy entry to the industry, good training and support for licensing, 401k match and health dental benefits, fair vacations allowances.

Cons – In this position there is limited room for vertical advancement. There are to many employees that are over qualified stuck in this position with not enough recruitment from inside.

Advice to Senior Management – Technology seems to be the limiting factor in most projects and problems. Look to recognize employees based on their performance and not their politics.

Former Employee – worked at Charles Schwab

Pros – Broker training program is great. You get hands-on experience along with one of the best training programs in the industry.

Cons – Pay is very low for the industry. Promotions don't usually lead to raises, so you have more responsibility but are not fairly compensated for the extra work.

Advice to Senior Management – Offer better compensation to employees to reduce turnover.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend