Capital One – “Good first job”

Pros

As a Business Analyst Capital One was a fun place to work. Typically, people are quite approachable and talkative. You are quite flexible in your own schedule as long as you get the work done. I liked being able to work from home when I didn't have any meetings. Capital One has a good reputation for being analytically advanced especially for credit risk management.

Cons

The senior management is mostly experienced analysts and not the best strategic thinkers so you may often find yourself being pulled into working on some detail which may have no value for the business. Similarly, there may happen large organizational changes which may not make any sense but you just follow it because you are told so. Finally, especially during the past few years due to worsening credit environment there has been a number of budget cuts so a lot of the free perks disappeared.

Advice to Senior Management

The business decisions are quite backward looking. I would recommend them to really think about multiple future scenarios especially during the times when economic uncertainty exists. In addition management is not enough connected to external world such as competition and customer satisfaction. Finally, I would recommend them to consider what adds value to the business and what does not. I sense that there are many business tasks and projects which have no business value but they exist because someone thinks that it looks good to have initiated a work-stream or task.