Bankrate Reviews

Pros

-Good career opportunities exist for those who care about their jobs and perform well.

-People who do not care about their jobs, typically do not last long.

-Industry Leader
-Good Benefits
-Location downtown is superb
-Free coffee, soda, snacks, catered food on occasion
-Young professionals make the culture much more enjoyable
-Company always advertises new positions internally and does look to promote within whenever possible.

Cons

Bankrate is extremely corporate, and as a result things tend to move at an excruciatingly slow pace. Everything from a new entry level hire, to when you can use the restroom, seems to have to be approved by Bankrate corporate, which is an excruciating process in and of itself.

There appears to be a duplication of efforts between the executive team that was put into place by Bankrate to run the Insurance vertical, and the executives in New York who appear to be trying to maintain control of a company whom they never visit.

After the Acquisition of NetQuote.com and the subsequent merger between NetQuote and Insureme, the culture definitely became much more of a politically motivated environment, than a results motivated environment. As a result, many key individuals have left the company in search of a more desirable work environment, and some have actually been fired for giving their honest feedback to the executive team.

Bankrate no longer hires directly for service and sales related positions. Rather, they hire through a temp agency which provides disposable employees at extremely low pay who come and go without ever really learning the business, or having any motivation to perform.

Bankrate appears to be running the company at an extremely high margin as almost none of the employees who have left have been replaced. This has left the remaining employees disgruntled as there has been little to no attempt to secure the remaining employees who continue to work hard for the company, other than the possibility of a company standard 3% annual pay increase.

Advice to Senior Management

Why put an executive team in place if you do not trust their ability to make good decisions for the company?

Start filling the positions of those who will left to show that you are committed to your company. Without committing to your employees, no employee will commit to your company.

Stop hiring temps to do the most important jobs (which is retaining your customer base).

Offer incentives for performers, and recognize those who perform.

Pros

Free coffee, free soda and sometimes catered food.
An extreme lack of work gives you plenty of free time to watch movies on your computer, so make friends with your headphones.
You can bring a pillow to work for naps.

Cons

Where should I start?
1. If you are not in the right cliche don't expect any promotions.
2. Be prepared to be bored and I mean very bored as you sit around waiting for things to get approved so you can move on to the next thing.
3. No one ever talks in person, everything is communicated through e-mail or IM.
4. There is a department with only 2 people and one is a VP.
5. Lots of waste, such as having a 2 person department and one being a VP.
6. Most people are just concerned with making sure no one else really knows how little work they really do lest they lose their job.

Advice to Senior Management

What management?

Pros

Located in lower downtown of Denver
Benefits are decent

Cons

Culture has a negative tone. Ever since the merge of InsureMe and NetQuote, the culture is not set and there is a feel of 2 companies working under the same roof. Due to this, employee morale is low.

There is also a feel of a control battle. Senior management is composed of both NetQuote and InsureMe employees, so there is this constant tension in the air.

High turnover in various departments due to the above.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to keep your quality employee's happy.
Leadership and Vision is needed in senior management.

Pros

Good pay, free coffee and catered food sometimes

Cons

Most of the Senior Management care nothing about teamwork or have a clue about team building. Their only concerned that nobody gets their jobs. Most have never had any experience in their positions before Bankrate. It one of those places where the people who stayed did so because they could never get a position like they have in any other company. The rest left.

Advice to Senior Management

Analyze current management, talk to the people who report to them and replace or train them in management skills. Create an environment where people want to help each other not protect their jobs.

Pros

Free coffee, water and donuts.

Cons

Bankrate seems to have a serious problem retaining and respecting the work of minority employees. Most of the turnover coincidentally seems to come from minority employees.

The editorial department, IT dept. and senior management especially carry themselves with an elitist attitude despite the fact that many are underqualified for their positions.

Advice to Senior Management

Give it a rest.

Pros

Benefits like health care, matching 401k, other employees, location.

Cons

If you are looking for a project to move along, it wont. There are way to many things that slow the process down in QA and IT. I came from a small company to Bankrate and got much more done in a smaller amount of time. Too many bottlenecks at Bankrate and because of this you will see many of the employees using work time for play time. Play Farmville lately? I like to be busy at work and this job was tough because I had to wait for approvals that never were in site.

Advice to Senior Management

Find and fix your bottlenecks so projects can move along and you will see and increase in productivity.

Also the Accounting dept. needs to set-up a process to work with all the acquired companies instead of working against them. Standard forms, a phone call to explain your processes. I dont care how busy you may be in this dept. these types of things will save you time in the long run.

Pros

Great pay. Great benefits. Good time off. Some interesting projects.

Cons

Terrible morale. Awfully negative culture. too much departmental infighting

Advice to Senior Management

Can all the directors in IT.

Pros

Good benefits and location in FL

Cons

too many to mention on this site

Advice to Senior Management

stop pitting employees against each other

Pros

At Bankrate you are surrounded by great leadership. Senior VPs are very visible and extremely approachable. It's rare that employees leave which is a very which is a testament to the culture and success of Bankrate. When working for a company such as Bankrate, you can certainly feel good about the product that you are selling and take pride that you're with an industry leader.

Cons

I can honestly say there aren't too many downsides when working for a company like Bankrate. We've been doing buiness for a long time so change typically takes some time. Any change to the website is calcutated and tested before it's implemented.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep dooing what you are doing. You've taken the time to put the right people in their positions and by doing so you have created a very positive atmosphere to work.