BMO Financial Group Reviews in Toronto, ON Area

Pros

People are old, which means younger employees are much smarter and can easily get away with alot. Overall the people are very nice and share alot of information. Training is also very good as the bank dosen't really expect you to know much, if you do alot that that's great, if you don't no worries they will train you.

Cons

I worked there for 3 years. I can honestly say that it all depends on the type of job grade you start at. If you start at a grade 30 there are not many jobs out there for you when you want to move up from within. My suggestion is to ANYONE who is interviewing at BMO is ask them what the job grade is. All the good jobs start at grade 32 and up. If anything starts under that don't take it as it will kill your career. After working there for 3 years I have to pretty much start at the bottom of the IT ladder because thier systems and processes are outdated. Don't fall into the same trap. Go to a smaller company for less money but knowing you will learn more and grow faster. Then come to BMO with good experience, this will ensure you don't get a low job grade to start.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire all the old people who know nothing about the new technology and promote the smarter, healthier younger employees. Otherwise they will leave and find better jobs.

Pros

competitive pay as a contractor. no worry of lack of work. loose environment so easy relax job. work from home possible.

Cons

Tight deadline should never be the excuse for quality, but here in BMO it does use this excuse, and use it very often. As IT professional it is rather painful to go through those undocumented heterogeneous codes to figure out what the problem is. Less time spend up front means significant more time spend later on but apparently management/architecturer ignore this.

Advice to Senior Management

pay attention to quality, software engineer wise. To make it work is not enough, to make it work RIGHT is fundamental, not some bonus.

Pros

Work life balance
Enterprise wide projects

Cons

IT career opportunities very limited; most work is sent off shore to India

Advice to Senior Management

Good job with advertising and being customer focused

Pros

Exposure to different technologies, opportunities to work on different teams across different business units, business knowledge transferable to other institutions in the industry.

Cons

Salaries are below industry average, decision making process is slow, management doesn't care about employees, they know that they can easily replace anyone and hence the attitude.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat people with more respect, listen to what subordinates have to say and act upon it. BMO is a good place to work, but has the potential to be a great place to work!

Pros

- excellent training and learning opportunities

Cons

- extensive workload and stress

Advice to Senior Management

- get training in HR

Pros

Fair compensation
Regular working hours
Friendly employees, management and environment in general

Cons

No opportunities to grow within the company

Pros

diverse environment with unlimited learning potential.

Cons

Pay Scales are not attractive.

Pros

Free banking service; discounted brokerage fee; good insurance; stock sharing plan; great knowledge sharing through internal website; fair job assignment; professional coworker

Cons

Due to the specific task, it is hard to grow within one position; it does not compensate employee outside education like Cfa, mba

Advice to Senior Management

More clear job description on the career website. Creat job profile like TD. Spend more resource to train and develop new staff.

Pros

people
benefits are decent compared to other firms

Cons

very low pay (poverty line)
year end bonuses/raises are very low ($500 raise from CSR to Senior CSR)
no personal growth
no ability to move

Pros

Great corporate university (IFL), decent benefits, good employee recognition program (Bravo), interesting opportunities if you get the option to do internal consulting role.

Cons

People managers generally untrained and un-coached, resulting in some very difficult employee-manager relationships, pay is supposedly sub-par for the industry, culture is focusing on performance, but without a real sense of how to make that work.