Charles Schwab Reviews in Phoenix, AZ Area

Pros

Schwab will help you get licensed - it's a good place to work for those right out of college. They also help with certifications and continuing education.

Cons

Management does not respect you.
The pay is horrible.
Incredible amount of stress.
Sales component has been added, but compensation has not changed.
Difficult to move within the company.

Advice to Senior Management

I would pay attention to your employees' level of engagement and make more of an effort to retain your high performers.

Pros

Great company to enter the finance industry with. The company looks really good on a resume. That's where the pros end, very quickly.

Cons

The company pay is way below average, plus there are very few opportunities to increase your income. We literally were being paid bonuses with lottery scratches. If you are desperate, and I mean desperate to get into the financial industry then go with Schwab.

Advice to Senior Management

Nothing

Pros

Professional atmosphere and well communicated expectations. The benefits at Schwab are as good as any large corporation and the pay was about right.

Cons

Any call center job is very difficult to move out of. You compete with about 800 other reps and any move you make out of your role in the call center will likely translate to a lateral move or a pay increase to another job on the phones. It is extremely difficult to move into a branch or sales role. I personally knew many people who were in the call center between 5 and 10 years without getting out. Bonus payouts are extremely low and frustrating. Sales through service is pushed with no real incentive.

Advice to Senior Management

The biggest topic that most reps talk about when management is not around is the need for an improved bonus payout system. Sales became an increasing focus over time with no offer to be paid for your sales. The minimum was unacceptable and there is constant pressure from the top down with little payout. I heard that certain directors were unprofessional in manager meetings and put big pressure on managers to perform.

Pros

Great Training, Great Benefits, and a very ethical company.

Cons

Low pay, very few promotions within the company, Bonuses are a large part of the compensation but only paid once a year.

Advice to Senior Management

I think they should award the top producing representatives with pay and promotions and not just let all the better reps leave once they are trained at Schwab.

Pros

Large company means more stability in this economy.

Cons

Communications are difficult; too many contractors in IT. Schwab uses more Indian contractors in house than any other place I've ever worked. While some Indian developers are good; few are engineer level. In addition, it appears that Schwab uses Indians to lower their costs, thus they are doing little to help our unemployment rate in this country. In addition, they utilize QA engineers in India for ALL QA, with only a few QA Engineers in the US to manage the process. Again, this does not provide for the US employment situation. In a recent layoff, a large number of software development related employees were layed off, while most Indian contractors were kept.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop using so many Indian contractors - there are plenty of good developers in this country.

Pros

Some of the benefits of Schwab is taking time off is the easiest thing whether its using sick time, vacation time, or floating holidays. The health benefits and lifetime trade discounts are awesome.

Cons

90% of the people that work at the operations centers are on the phone all day and barely get time between calls. You are expected to add value to every call even if the person is calling up for a quote on 1 stock. The QA system is the worst part of the job. Every month they will randomly QA a certain numbers of calls you took and each time they say you could have done 1 more thing to help the customer even if you offered a product Schwab offers.

Advice to Senior Management

learn to recognize good customer service from companies that have demonstrated it..i.e(Apple, Amazon, Edward Jones).

Pros

Schwab has the most comfortable, open, welcoming corporate culture I've ever experienced. Peers and direct reports (up and down the chain) maintain strong interpersonal relationships. Teams generally function as the term implies - a group of people working toward common goals. Information sharing is much more prevalent than in many other organizations.

I can't speak for the current environment at the company as I left in 2007, prior to the financial meltdown; Schwab has gone through many large layoffs in the past, and this may have caused more fear for job security to enter in and disturb the culture and efficiency.

As far as career selection, Schwab offers a wide ability to "redeploy" within the company, with more opportunities for individual exploration than found in many sectors.

Cons

The main facilities in Phoenix are very drab and dreary, a sharp contrast to the building on Camelback & 32nd - beautiful, great views, well designed, and (last I heard) recently closed.

There's also a duplication of some functions throughout the business, so rather than a large team to pool resources and execute projects with higher quality, smaller groups will often work on projects and, through limited time, resources, budget, etc., produce somewhat mediocre results. While this is unfortunate from a quality perspective, it does allow for a smaller, more personal feel to the work you do.

Advice to Senior Management

Reconciliation of the schism between technical and business sides of project management would be a great benefit to project execution. The communication & expectation differences often cause large delays and major hiccups.

Pros

Great place to be if you are incompetent and have no ambition.

Cons

The new mgmt decision to pay all equally, it doesn't matter if you're great or not. Good performers get paid the same low salary as incompetent ones.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward hard work.

Pros

Schwab offers a great training program when you are first hired. They pay for your series 7 and 63 and offer a pretty good benefits package.

Cons

The recruiting staff will tell you want you want to hear so that they can get paid. Once you are hired, the recruiters will hound you about your friends and family. "When are you going to send me some people I can talk with?" Schwab seems to be moving more towards pushing sales on clients and asking probing questions on every call. Yet they won't pay a commission to their brokers. They taut that they pay a nice bonus at the end of the year, it ends up being a retention bonus.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide brokers who show an interest in learning more opportunity to grow and gain market knowledge. Don't discourage your talent to go elsewhere.

Pros

A good entry level opportunity with ample training and sponsorship for requisite licensing. We truly try to servuce our client base. I'm proud that they overtly passed on taking any TARP funds and, therefore, are in control of their destiny.

Cons

Compensation is not commensurate with services and abilities. Pay structure is that of a call-center mentality. If you are looking for a Meritocracy this is not the place. Rather, the lack of incentives breeds mediocrity. While QA is an important imperative, they are hyper-focused on some petty QA metrics.

Advice to Senior Management

A logo coffee mug and a 4" plastic trophy do not constitute incentives.