State Farm Reviews

Pros

Brand in the Insurance industry doesnt get any better than State Farm

Cons

Horrible Agent 05 Contract
Difficult Career Advancement opportunities

Advice to Senior Management

Change the AA05 contract to reward agents that make it to year 5, 10, 15, and 20.

Pros

Best corporate support in the industry
good hours
most clients appriciate the work you do for them
Agents are incredibly flexible and allow team members to generally accomplish tasks as THEY see fit

Cons

Pay is a little low for the work that is put in.
Agents make the real money, team members sometimes work harder than the pay would indicate

Pros

Job security and friends are the top two reasons to work for State Farm.

Cons

If you have a brain, use logic, and security is not at the top of your list; you will be bored.

Advice to Senior Management

Think and expect employees to think.

Pros

You spend a majority of your day providing customer service for existing accounts, but you also look for opportunities to sell every time you interact with someone. The agent will provide the sales goals needed and making those benchmarks determines either your salary or your bonus or both. It can be very rewarding to know you are provide people with the right type of coverage, such as sufficient life insurance or correct liability to match their assets. You also can become very familiar/attached to your clients who regularly call or stop by. Our company is known for being a good neighbor and yourself being the only part of State Farm the customer may ever interact with. You are State Farm in their eyes.

Cons

Sometimes the workday can get monotonous. There are the trouble clients who constantly call to complain about their bill or never pay on time. You also have to find cold and in-book leads which can be difficult if you are not good with sales over the phone.

Advice to Senior Management

More structure during workday would help.

Pros

State Farm is currently reinventing itself in order to meet the constant changes that affect its market place. Resources and support are available within the company to assist in meeting and exceeding the challenges that are presented.

Cons

A significant investment amount of capital and a well defined planned is needed to inject into your agency in order to maintain success.

Advice to Senior Management

The job of management is to set the expectation and provide guidance and reinforcement toward agents in the field. Management is doing an excellent job of providing reinforcement, training, and support toward agencies in the field.

Pros

mon-fri but that will change anytime the agent thinks it is needed.

Cons

Agent is never there and expects you to grow his agency as he wants but never is there to tell you how that is. Unrealistic goals set for ALL employees. Office manager is very nice but only wants to do service work and be left alone. Agent can barely write an auto policy and often tells customers what ever he thinks is best even if it is untrue. You are promised 40k a year pay because of commission but DO NOT expect any more than 30K not matter what and that is being very optimistic. You be told do to whatever it takes to set appointments for the agent to meet with current customers. Good luck because if the agent has something fun to do that day or week he will ask you to reschedule it. Only take this job if you are very very very desperate!

Pros

Having a wide array of products to offer from a company that is very reputable and has been around forever. Not a person in th world can tell you they have not heard from State Farm.

Cons

Employees of agents are just that, staff of that agent. They make it very clear that you are not employed by State Farm. Corporate loves to cancel people, raise rates, and take away discounts (homeowners) with no explanations because they know they don't have to hear the wrath of the client. It really depends on who you work for but my employer offers no benefits whatsoever and makes it seem like approving a vacation day is actually a favor, sort of like "I'm going to give you this day off but when you come back im going to need this". After a certain time you will not be able to take this job anymore, it is just not rewarding. Unless you want to sell life, health, and banking products, this is not for you.

Advice to Senior Management

Agent staff are really the ones in the trenches day in and day out and the real faces of State Farm. Get a little more involved with he real people making you the money and not only bringing in the clients but keeping them on the books when things get sour.

Pros

Worlds 18th largest economy = lot's of deployments

Cons

SF Staffers hate the independents. They overworked us & underpaid us. Fired without reason.

Advice to Senior Management

Supervise your TM's better & treat the IA's better or roll over and let All State take over the market.

Pros

Great work life balance. Company sponsored health programs. Excellent benefits.
Enjoyable co-workers.
Access to the State Farm Park.
Bloomington/Normal is a great place to live and the pay is enough to live comfortable.

Cons

Tends to be more reactive than proactive.
Management not always willing to listen to employee feedback.
External vendor resources are treated as second class citizens

Advice to Senior Management

People aren't resources to be consumed and expelled. The organization uses a large amount of vendor employees but are treated as if they should only be there to listen and not teach. In all the time I'd been there I learned more from the EAs than I ever did from our employees.

Pros

The internship is a great opportunity to travel (if you're not from Bloomington), meet a TON of other students like you, and really get your foot in the door.
Almost everyone knows about State Farm, so adding it to your resume will make you have pride in where you've worked. The internship is great experience in any field, because there are so many departments within the company.

Cons

You have to be ready for the corporate-culture. The internship always starts off really slow (as does any internship) and then once you get into the swing of things, you will be working a full-time job. Once you have enough work to accomplish, the time will go by very quickly.