Edward Jones Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Edward Jones

Pros – Friendly employees, great training, and decent benefits

Cons – Pay is well below average and hard to get decent pay increases because it is based on how long you have been at the company and the manager has to go by the scale.

Advice to Senior Management – Pay your employees better and maybe you will end up keeping the motivated employees.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Edward Jones

Pros – Flexibility, uncapped earning potential, incentives

Cons – residential door knocking to get business,

Advice to Senior Management – Need to revisit the door to door approach as people are getting more and more skeptical every day and are unwilling to talk to people at their door. Also more people are working these days, so for the most part noone is home.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Edward Jones

Pros – - Truly care for associates and clients
- A balanced work/life approach
- Lots of opportunity for leadership and development

Cons – - No major downsides except for as the firm grows larger decisions are slowed, culture is diluted and opportunities for senior management are diminished.

Advice to Senior Management – - Stay focused on the firm's strengths, yet remain flexible and prepared to pursue opportunities e.g. LR markets, client/associate demographics, more assets per client, new revenue sources.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Edward Jones

Pros – bankers hours are nice, nights, weekends and holidays off
very good training
limited partnership oppurtunities in the long term
ethical firm

Cons – pay is not enough
boring cubicle job is not very exciting
you spend alot of time training others
you must spend along time with the firm because it is hard to work your way up the ladder

Advice to Senior Management – keep your employees more motivated and don't treat them like worker drones.
Edward Jones is a great copmpany to be a financial advisor for, otherwise you will be overworked and underpaid

Former Employee – worked at Edward Jones

Pros – The working environment in the branches is excellent if you like autonomy and an emphasis on developing local markets creates opportunities for regular face-to-face interactions with clients, who like the convenience of the neighborhood locations, making it easier to build lasting relationships.

Cons – Problems arise with the lack of advanced training; a limited technology platform; a weak line-up of investment product offerings; little to no research, or at least not that is very useful anyway (see lack of advanced training); pricing and payout options that favor the firm over the producer; conflicts of interest regarding revenue sharing arrangements with vendors that are not properly disclosed to clients; poor supervision of inexperienced advisors working in the field and very poor marketing materials.

Advice to Senior Management – Advisors in the field have the capability to do great things for this company but management will not provide them with the tools, the training, the technology, the products and pricing options that their advisors need to be competitive and that their clients need to be successful.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Edward Jones

Pros – this is a good place to start .. lots of training but not alot of upward mobility. Good for someone fresh out of college

Cons – stagnant growth, not alot of technological tools, focus to much on selling the hot items and not enought on broad learning that can help your clients.

Advice to Senior Management – spend more time teaching, the IRs are not dumb and can handle more advanced techniques, lose to many clients to the flash of other firms

Current Employee – been working at Edward Jones

Pros – Good company benefits.
Home office support

Cons – Start with no office
cold calls
door knocking

Advice to Senior Management – Vets need to help out the new guys

Former Employee – worked at Edward Jones

Pros – Probably the best big firm in the brokerage business. It is very careful not to even offer very risky products to clients. This keeps everyone out of trouble - clients, the firm, and advisors. The willingness to offer guidance is outstanding - at many firms, advisors guard their knowedge carefully and jealously, so as to keep their advantage. At EDJ my experience was that there was an enormous amount of camaraderie and willingness to spend time coaching and mentoring younger advisors. The tools available to help clients are outstanding as well. Many firms allow only top producers to use things like the Morningstar X-Ray - EDJ makes this available to all advisors. Also, the customer contact database is far superior to other firms I have worked for.

Cons – The work of a financial advisor is tough at all firms. EDJ could do more to support young financial advisors in their careers to reduce the failure rate. Benefits for financial advisors are very costly after the subsidy period is over (2 years?). At the end of the day all financial advisors at EDJ and other firms are sales people - that is what is valued the most - their understanding of portfolio construction and financial planning is hit or miss depending on the individual skills of the advisors they hire. My experience is that the experience of the average advisor is a little thin. I would not want my parents to invest with an EDJ advisor unless they had "real" credentials - a CFP or bachelor's or masters in financial planning. Truth be told, this is rare, not just at EDJ, but across the industry.

Advice to Senior Management – EDJ is a great company with so much going for it that sometimes it is difficult to recognize weaknesses. Perhaps because EDJ has such a committment to a buy and hold strategy it is very slow to recognize when a company is really a loser and tends to hang on to buy and hold opinions on stocks and bonds when those should really be sells. I think EDJ should work to strengthen its research capabilities so as to not be caught off guard by Chrysler or Lehman Bro's bonds or by Worldcom, Citi, Wachovia stock implosions.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Edward Jones

Pros – The benefits are the best I have ever seen.

Cons – The new FA turn-around can be difficult, it's a new supervisor every time an FA doesn't make it. FA's are the direct leader/supervisor of the BOA, they are solely responsible for approving time-off, and suggesting/allowing pay increases through reviews.

Advice to Senior Management – More supervision or accountability check points for new FA's. It appears that FA's physically being with another veteran FA are more accountable. They have to make contacts...someones watching! BOA's should be able to submitt a review of their FA to the firm...I believe this information would be priceless!!! BOA'a are the eyes and ears of what is going on in the branch.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Edward Jones

Pros – Balance between work/personal life is very good
Lots of support from home office to their branches
Relaxing workplace

Cons – No real growth opportunities outside of home office
2 positions in branches, Financial Advisor and Office Admin

Advice to Senior Management – It would be nice to have financial analysts with the advisors in branch, also BOA seem to be overlooked in terms of growth within the company and benefits when realistically, they are work horses of your branches.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend