National Futures Association Reviews

Former Employee – worked at National Futures Association full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Hours, ability to learn, ability to move around departments, work life balance

Cons – anything to be expected when working with a lot of young professionals

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at National Futures Association full-time

Pros – -Seamless transition from college to the working world
-Opportunity for quick advancement into a supervisory role
-Extreme Work/Life Balance
-Training programs
-Competitive compensation and excellent benefits
-Travel Perks
-Tuition Reimbursement
-Nice People

Cons – -No accountability
-Limited perspective (majority of upper management are "Lifers")
-Promotions based on internal special projects rather than competency and knowledge of the subject matter
-Very few subject matter "experts" within the compliance department
-Check the box/punch the clock culture

Advice to Senior Management – -Recognize talent and offer better rewards for hard workers
-Stop hiring people with irrelevant work experience just because they have "experience"
-De-emphasize the extreme "work-life" balance mentality
-Raise the academic standards for college seniors and focus recruiting efforts on large reputable colleges
-Hold staff and management accountable for glaring oversights and careless mistakes

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at National Futures Association full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good open door policy work environment with rapid advancement potential. Exposure to a wide variety of firms with varying business operations.

Cons – The company's average worker age is very young.

Advice to Senior Management – More actively seek better recruits and more highly qualified candidates as the firm has high employee turnover ratio.

Former Employee – worked at National Futures Association

Pros – Extensive Travel
Great atmosphere
Young and enthusiastic workforce
Fun outings
Engaging work

Cons – A bit of downtime
Boring first few weeks of classroom training
High worker turnover

Advice to Senior Management – It was a great internship, can't think of anything negative!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at National Futures Association

Pros – Great work life balance
Friendly, youthful atmosphere

Cons – No feedback unless you beg for it

Advice to Senior Management – Don't just promote people because they worked on a prominent matter. People do their job day in and day out, and well too, but not everyone is "lucky enough" to get noticed.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at National Futures Association

Pros – NFA has a lot of great things going for it and is probably the best company I've ever worked for. In fact, I regret leaving...

I enjoyed the travel, the people I worked with were great and smart, and the commodities and futures industry knowledge you gain from performing audits and firm reviews is invaluable.

Leadership is also great. How many people can say they've had a beer with one of their senior levels executives and talked liked they were old college buddies...in their first month of employment? I use that example to illustrate just how accessible everyone and down to earth EVERYONE is--executives, directors, management, field supervisors, staff.

The initial pay is arguably a touch low BUT the benefits of work-life balance, per diem while traveling, the exceptional benefits package, the career growth, and the job security more than make up for a salary that is maybe $2k below market wages. Trust me, you will get promoted quickly and your salary will reflect it. I'd say, you can expect a $10k - $15k increase in your salary--putting you in the $65k range--in three years.

In summary: great company, great leadership, nice co-workers, outstanding benefits, good pay.

Cons – The one thing that I disliked the most about NFA was the cliquish culture. NFA tends to recruit from a group of feeder schools and many people tend to run in the same college circles.

The second challenge was the auditor-pool arrangement. Instead of traveling with the same people audit after audit and learning a persons strengths and weaknesses as well as a field supervisor's/manager's expectations I worked with a new set of people almost every audit. As a new-hire, it was like starting over again each time I went out on an audit. I didn't feel like I was able to perform my best in that arrangement.

Advice to Senior Management – You are doing a great job, keep up the good work! You listen to suggestions, adjust when it makes business sense, and everyday we know that you care about us.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at National Futures Association

Pros – For those straight out of college, it is a great job to transition into the real world. The pay is enough so you won't be starving and benefits are adequate.

Cons – The company is essentially a monopoly so they have no pressure to improve their operations. Except for low level employees, they bring in new staff with fresh ideas. Those with good ideas are essentially quelled and pushed away. That turns upper management into those remaining that are complacent and afraid to give up their power.

Advice to Senior Management – Replace the current directors and start over. They are a main reason why attrition is so high

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at National Futures Association

Pros – some of the best reasons to work at NFA is the flexibility that the company offers to its full time employees.

Cons – some of the downsides to workoing at NFA is that sometime there may be quite a bit of traveling around manhattan

Advice to Senior Management – i would tell upper manageemnt to bridge the gap betweent the adutiors and supervisors up to the manager level status.

Current Employee – been working at National Futures Association

Pros – Work Life, Flex days, Benefits,

Cons – Management, Unprofessionalim, Feedback, Do not promote talent fast enough, no development

Advice to Senior Management – Favoritism

Former Employee – worked at National Futures Association

Pros – work and personal life balance. Also, the co-workers help each others to make it work. Interactions between the departments helped to learned more.

Cons – The politics were very bad. The senior management team did not have a clear direction and lack of management supports.

Advice to Senior Management – NFA is the place that could be an awesome place to work; however, the management team does not want to listen to the employees' feedback.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend