Citizens Financial Group Reviews in Philadelphia, PA Area

Pros

The best reason to work at Citizens Financial Group is for the experience of getting in the door for a business major. It is a a financial institution in these hard times are making a change. This is the only company that I worked for that I actually met the CEO in person a couple of times and had a one to one conversation. Very few companies have a CEO that would come overseas to meet with each employee. Great benefits, including educational assistance which reimburses you for college expenses.

Cons

The downsides of working at Citizens Financial Group in my area is the changing of baseline throughout the quarter. One month you made have a reasonable baseline goal the next month it can double and change your whole strategy of achieving it. Technology in the bank is quite outdated teller systems, practice of telemarketing to get customers in the bank. The teaser rates they use to get customer in the bank.

Advice to Senior Management

The customers want a bank that they can trust and earn a lot from. The teaser rates to get the customer to bring money in then change next month to close to nothing actually makes customer take their money elsewhere.

Pros

- Very good place to get your foot into the door within the industry
- Good opportunity to learn about banking without tremendous prior experience
- Friendly atmosphere, good working relationship among peers.

Cons

Where do I begin?
I've worked for over 6 months in a short staffed branch without a branch manager. Senior management expects all goals to be exceeded and has even increased our goals yet have failed to provide management for my branch. The technology is way behind and we are forced to product push multiple products to customers that they really do not need.
- I was also strongly advised by upper management to not go for a promotion because "you actually may get it and not be ready for it" - Their words.

Advice to Senior Management

Step down from your thrones and take a serious look at how hard peasant life is.

Pros

You want easy hours and little work (unless you are a branch assistant manager).
Benefits are all good.

Cons

The ONLY way you move up in this organization is by kissing the ass of your superior, and by this I mean something specific: Your superior is getting his ass spanked by his superior, who insists in a barrage of daily emails that he generate more "sales". To whatever extent you can sympathize and pretend to somehow magically generate more sales (that nobody in the organisation has any actual sales insight notwithstanding), you'll get promoted.

Overall, the organization feels like a zombie.

Advice to Senior Management

Give us a real vision that we can communicate to customers. And emphasize LEADERSHIP, not sales. The sales will follow.

Pros

customers are great and they need your help if you care, there is room to learn and grow but you really have to work hard for it

Cons

Once you work there you realize there are many overpaid managers that are there only because of a resume or because they have just been there for a while, but they do not work hard at all nor deserve the position and furthermore the salary they have. Its offensive that no matter how hard you work the chance that it will take less than 10 yrs to get up to their salary is pretty slim to none. Also there is poor direction and training too often people dont know how to do their job correctly and the correct information is not communicated effectively.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward exceptional colleagues adequately, not just through praise but also via salary or you will lose them. Treat the colleagues that have dedicated their time and passion better then new hires. Just because a colleague is tenured does not mean they are good at what they do. When you lose exceptional colleagues, especially those that have direct contact with your customers it eventually affects your reputation with your customers. Although an intense retail environment drives the constant increase of new sales and new customers, the long term relationships with your customers will end up being much fewer than projected and expected.

Pros

Benefit package was very good. There are many nice perks for current employees including vredit towards new home purchases, day-care credit, and education credit.

Cons

Other than a few people I worked at in the branch level, there is a very cut throat attitude. I was a top performing manager and was basically forced out of my job because the manager and I did not agree on how sales should be made. She felt that every customer should leave the branch with some sort of new product, regardless if they needed it or not. This was a philosophy shared by upper management as well. There were 2 daily conference calls with the region (14 branches). The morning one was to game plan how you were not only going to "sell" 3-4 checking accounts a day, but also set 10 new appointments for new products. The evening one was to either explain how you met those goals, or try and explain how you didn't and what you would do the next day to not only rebound from that's day's failure, but to make the next day a success.
I would not recommend this company to even my worst enemy.

Advice to Senior Management

It's about the customer needs, not making some arbitrary number,

Pros

The best thing about working for Citizens is the team you are apart of. Everyone has hilarious and informative anecdotes for sharing which makes each day pass by extremely fast. The benefits arent too impressive (no tuition-reimbursement for example) but the varied experience you gain will definitely be useful in the future.

Cons

No raises at the moment, incompetent management.

Advice to Senior Management

I would like Citizens to emphasize with us and look try to look at things from our perspective. Too many of the decisions made behind the scenes benefits everyone except the employee.

Pros

Do what your supposed to do and you will keep your job. You can get away with a lot of things as long as your getting good sales numbers. Coworkers are nice. You can get your shopping done without having to make an extra stop.

Cons

Management is always changing. Seems like customers get screwed over sometimes. There is too much time wasted on conference calls. Bonuses are harder and harder to get every quarter. Citizens has been making more and more cutbacks. Hours are capped at thirty seven point five. Sometimes have to take long lunch that is really never taken.

Advice to Senior Management

They need to get out to the branches more to see what is actually going on. The conference calls need to be lessened. they are a waste of time to have three of them a day.

Pros

Citizens offers great benefits. There are many opportunities for career advancement.

Cons

Weekends are required if you work in a branch. Citizens is very agressive about its sales goals. Some new employees are not aware of this when coming aboard, and it is a shock for some people.

Advice to Senior Management

The branches are open many holidays (in the grocery store branches). We used to have off Labor and Memorial Days, but are open as of 2007. The traditional branches have all national holidays off. In conclusion, the in-stores suffer because many employees transfer because they do not want to work the extra days. Please keep all of the branches on the same holiday schedule.