Charles Schwab Reviews in Denver, CO Area

Pros

Solid company, growing Colorado presence

Cons

Low pay, has a history of layoffs.

Pros

Having Schwab on the resume is beneficial and the benefits are generous with lots of vacation and sick time available.

Cons

Generally, working for Charles Schwab might be good for most people. If you work on the bank side, it is a miserable place to work. The technology is in the dark ages, so are the services Schwab Bank offfers it's clients. The debit cards often don't work because of Schwab's conservative approach to risk management. Clients are always calling in because their debit cards don't work. Also, internal employees at Schwab always call bank for the wrong reasons. They act like Bank is the help desk if they don't know the answer to something related to their job. They never use internal resources such as the help desk for their department or the internal search engine. There is a "when in doubt, call bank" mentality. Also, the pay on the bank side is subpar for the work that is required of us and the more than 20 different systems we had to use.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest some money in technology for the bank. Clients have high expectations for service at Schwab and the bank falls short of those expectations.

Pros

They pay for your training.
Good place to start a career

Cons

Pay
lack of growth
weird people
Lack of support from management

Advice to Senior Management

Invest more in your employees, its a call center basically.

Pros

Great management, vision, and commitment to the client.

Cons

The bank sucks. The technology is horrible, which causes lots of phone calls from angry clients. Also, internal departments call far too often. There's a "when in doubt, call the bank" mentality, rather than check their resources. Many calls that come in from internal departments do not even involve the bank.

Pros

stable company, good leadership, room for growth, helping people,

Cons

neutral pay scale, not much vacation time

Advice to Senior Management

Increase vacation time

Pros

The benefits are great and the culture is very laid back.

Cons

If you work on the bank side, the technology sucks, and other departments unnecessarily tend to transfer calls to us when they have the resources to handle the call themselves. The pay really sucks too.

Advice to Senior Management

In the call center, stop treating people like they are mere cogs in a wheel. Management really doesn't care about our personal lives outside of work. All they care about is if we are at work and on time, which is fine but they don't have any concern for us as people.

Pros

Ethical, client focused, good people to work around

Cons

Enough is never enough. It is always about doing more. Constant stress and constant change.

Advice to Senior Management

Think about the days when you cared as much about the employees as you do the clients. You will not be able to retain satisfied clients when you continue to push employees to the bring, cut their total rewards and at the same time continually add more to their plates. Continually adding additional work and higher expectations at the same time cutting recognition, reward, compensation is a sure road to disaster. Pause to give thought to the great people who have walked out because it is no longer a good (much less GREAT) place to work. Chuck, Walt, and senior management continue to be highly rewarded, sell their stock, while the rank and file get less and less.

Pros

-great health care benefits
-after 7 years of service you receive 13.3 hrs of vacation time a month
-month long paid sabbatical after 5 years
-easy work

Cons

-salary increases and bonus are hard to come by
-boring jobs, repetitive functions
-cubicles
-communication from upper management is not always clear or timely
-you are number and replaceable

Advice to Senior Management

none. it is what it is. it's a cubicle corporate repetitive job.

Pros

Opportunities to learn about stock market in the beginning
40 hours a week, overtime optional

Cons

No growth opportunities
Don't plan a career there
Have an exit strategy before you start
Job is redundant, brainless, and intolerable after a while
Conditions seemed to be getting worse

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in employee growth for the best candidate and allow for more horizontal and vertical promotions
Keep convincing people that the job is not that bad. It is stable, overtime is optional, and it is most profitable for the company to leave as many veterans on the phones as long as possible especially since you've halted raises for the highest earners. The business model needs a lot of good people at the bottom.

Pros

Good Benefits, Discounts, etc
Social and Friendly Co-Workers
On-Site Cafeteria
Looks good on resume
Sponsership to get your Brokerage Licenses

Cons

Call Center
No Growth Potiential
Low Salary

I just started in the Denver Office not too long ago. This is just a large call center regardless of what position you are in. I've shadowed other employees who have been with the company for 15+ years and they are still sitting in a cubicle answering phone calls...how depressing!

They send a lot of time talking about how ethical and great the company is, but little on how much the job is going to suck. The company does seems to care about clients (who complain about fees all the time). After filtering everything you hear about this company, your job will envolve a cubicle and a headset...thats it...no matter what your title is...you answer phones. If your entry level, consider it while your looking elsewhere or continuing education, but don't make a career out of it.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your employees like your clients