Charles Schwab Reviews

Pros

Charles Schwab is a great company to work for. There are many avenues for growth and internal promotion. Senior leadership lives out the vision and values. They are fair.

Cons

As Charles Schwab service centers are open 24/7/365, you are required to work some holidays throughout the year. There are many teams that work late evenings and/or weekends as well.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to be forward thinking. Make every effort to be an innovator, not an imitator - leading the industry. Find a way to put clients first while not losing sight of your employees' needs.

Pros

Company is committed to the client and to doing the right thing
You are not forced to sell any products to the clients, unless you are a branch financial consultant. Even then, anything you are "selling" is only if it is in the best interests of the client.

Cons

Unless you want to work in the branch, you are severely limited in locations you can live and work in

Pros

Awesome enviornment and work-life balance. Offer work from home for mid to senior level employees and alternative schedules.

Cons

Terrible "total rewards" pay structure, which limits employees to no more than a 2% raise annually. Schwab does not pay to retain talent, but creates a culture of "turn and burn" with their employees. Also, if you are promoted, which I have been 3 times and within 3 pay ranges, you will be paid 1% over the minimum salary range. No negiotiations or compromise by leadership on salaries. Again if you are looking to increase your salary by climbing the corporate ladder, please look else where.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay to retain talent, simple enough! Also a theory Schwab will not adopt. Priding us Schwabbies on culture is great, but corporate culture does not pay our mortgages, car payments or buy our children food. This is coming from an employee (6years) at the mid point in the hierarchy and it seems very poor from this view on down.

Pros

Great colleagues
Collaborative culture
Challenging projects
Financially conservative

Cons

lack of promotion opportunities
bonunses have been reduced
small annual increases

Advice to Senior Management

compensate employees appropriately

Pros

Great opportunities for business development with existing clients.

Cons

Difficult at times to concentrate on business development activities, servicing many clients with little administrative support.

Advice to Senior Management

No suggestions to offer at this time.

Pros

Schwab is a good company to build your experience as a registered representative. Within the office setting there can be good learning moments.

Cons

Office politics seems to control a lot of what goes on in the local offices. Competition from no fee funds makes it harder to make any type of commission.

Advice to Senior Management

Allow the offices to have more control over the types of programs offered to their clients. Maybe look at the pay schedules of the investment reps and work out a better program.

Pros

Smart, well-rounded people. Management was great, and I appreciated the consistent feedback in regard to job performance. I highly recommend them.

Cons

My training session was abbreviated, and you are committed to stay in the position for a minimum of 18 months before being able to apply elsewhere.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide a better incentive structure to employees that will motive them to take on more responsibility and accountability within the department.

Pros

great place to get licenses and learn about the industry.

Cons

Compensation needs to improve to keep talent.

Advice to Senior Management

Let Brokers place option trades in their accounts. Brokers have passed industry exams to prove option knowledge and are expected to be able to place option trades for customers, but are not trusted to place option trades in their own accounts.

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

- Good work life balance (you can almost get away with doing nothing)
- Good benefits
- Usually friendly people

Cons

- Compensation/Incentives package highly prohibitive (if you are towards the bottom of the pay range, you'll never catch your peers towards the upper end of the spectrum, regardless of how hard you work. The program favors the company.)
- Promotions into management nearly impossible unless you are one of the chosen few. Career paths have been defined and leadership development programs exist, but don't lead to growth opportunities.
- Middle management filled with yes men, don't expect your boss to set up to bat for you.
- Absence of mentoring and guidance to help individuals develop their skills and prepare for the next step of their career. Classes offered by Schwab's training department, but again don't lead to positive outcomes for employees.
- Management prescribes to the philosophy that engaged and happy employees will work for lower pay because of high job satisfaction. They forget a large number of employees are supporting families on less than $50K a year, which is pretty tough - I guess money isn't everything but it is pretty important when you practically live paycheck to paycheck.
- Not a growth company, resulting in limited growth opportunities and directions to move your career.
- Hiring managers are often unresponsive to internal applicant's request for informational interviews.
- Knowledge, skill, and abilities, get you nowhere; to be successful you need to communicate with force, confidence, and the assumption you are right (it is more important to be right than to do the right thing).
- Schwab is a classic bureaucracy, very conservative and risk averse.
- Recognition and appreciation are trivial and on the verge of insulting, unless you are in second grade.

Advice to Senior Management

Schwab is a great company and does fantastic things for its clients, but middle management does not adequately represent the front lines to senior leadership which is creating a unfavorable culture.