CIBC – “CIBC is a great stepping stone but not where you want to end up.”

Pros

It's easy to get your foot in the door with CIBC, either as teller earning $11/hr and with (depending on management level of lenience) unlimited sick days or from the plethora of administrative or call center roles available (as high as $17/hr with union in some cases). From there on, earn your designations as anyone would in this industry, CSC, CPH, and eventually CFP and you could be doing reasonable well without much progress until 7+ years into the roles.

Cons

Office politics and the way promotions are handled are areas of concern, especially in clusters of Vancouver where non-performing managers are "promoted" laterally without any significant merits (and in some cases have truly atrocious work performance and even attendance issues). It seems like certain senior management clusters worked together years before and have a tendency of hiring from within - repeat this over time and you have a very lax and unrewarding system to look forward to.

Add on time consuming personal feedback form that award seniority over actual dollar revenue generation and you have the resulting drop of CIBC from no2. to where it is sitting now

Advice to Senior Management

Senior Managements have mostly been fired by the Board of Director with the exception of good ol' Gerry, who also happens to sit on the Board. Perhaps a more thorough shuffle to management would do more good.

Shifting nameplates and titles is a redundant waste of millions of after-tax revenue and truly does not make employees feel like their efforts are going to the right places. Branch level management is another case-by-case issue - not to mention employee-banking offers are a laugh and it seems like employees often get worse offers on major items such as mortgage rates and such. Sorry, CIBC is a great stepping stone but not a career ender.