The Vanguard Group Reviews in Phoenix, AZ Area

Pros

Great environment. Low stress for the most part. Good people to work with.

Cons

Benefits being cut back for families. Slow progression. Tenure over Talent is the unspoken rule.

Advice to Senior Management

They do well

Pros

The benefits are great, if you can tolerate other aspects of the job long enough to become fully vested. Flexible schedule with the right manager.

Vanguard company ownership truly proves to be integral when it comes to client ownership, and doing what’s right for the client from an investment standpoint.

Cons

A job fit for an administrative assistant rather than a financial advisor/relationship manager.

If you currently have an office, with your own admin, do not make the mistake of thinking the grass is greener at Vanguard. Not greener, grayer! Depressing grey cube redundancy that fits a “call center” on every aspect, even though the words out of everyone’s mouth is “we’re not a call center”. Additionally, the managers who are saying that are also thinking in their head; “Thank God I don’t have their job!”

A very dirty job. 2500 clients get dumped in your lap, and it's your job to handle everything maintenance oriented, and fix all of the problems. This is a job role where you do all of the maintenance work instead of the portfolio management. What makes it worse is all of the admin work is done on the most archaic system platform I have ever seen. The training on how to use the multiple systems is almost absent, proving to be the longest system acclimation process I have ever experienced, and I build my own computers.

As far as using your investment expertise, you must transfer a client who wants advice to a CFP who are most likely less qualified, have fewer years managing portfolios, and have no professional experience outside of Vanguard. The insult to injury is the client manager who started their professional career with Vanguard, just passed their series 7 exam, over your shoulder explaining how to have an investment discussion with your client.

Finally…the pay. Let’s just say without exaggeration, you can make more money opening checking accounts at a bank than what you will make at Vanguard. The sweet talk about partnership and annual bonuses will earn you a whopping 3-5 k if you and your direct manager frequent happy hour together. Unfortunately, Bogle’s integrity which formed the company doesn’t flow through some of the leaders who have the freedom to depart from professionalism, and character.

Needless to say, I have a few interviews lined up.

Advice to Senior Management

Read the above and take action! If not, you will see a significant change to your attrition rate VERY soon.

Promote more qualified middle managers who have the proven experience necessary to properly lead seasoned financial professionals.

Pros

The benefits and contribution to employee 401k plans are fantastic. The campus and buildings are very nice, if not cult like. At first blush, the employees and management appear positive and professional.

Cons

There is really no one in the building to aspire to be, or to emulate.

The parking lot is filled with beater cars, and the employees dress quite poorly.

There is passive aggressive pushback from the faux intellectuals who call themselves "management", and general leeriness of knowledge and experience.

It is a collection of financial "professionals" who know nothing about the financial world outside of the next form they are to fill out.

Would be the perfect place for public school teachers and washed up insurance salesmen looking to make a transition and eat a good meal twice a year.

Advice to Senior Management

It is what it is. I understand the business model, and some types of people are more suited to drone work more than others.

But, Vanguard, if you are to take the next step as you appear to want to do, you should think about clearing out the passive aggressive middle "management" from dubious educational and professional backrounds, and upgrading the experience and educational quality of your staff.

Pros

Good benefits, Nice work enviroment, Management is approachable

Cons

Lower then average industry salary

Advice to Senior Management

Well done on respecting your employees

Pros

Having worked there for a year, I have already advanced into a C level position, waiving time in job, and I know that the advancement opportunities are unlimited.

Cons

The only downside I think would potentially be the pay, but I think that i can progress far enough within the company to have the benefits outweigh the downside.

Advice to Senior Management

I wish that there was an easier way to arrange for carpooling. We have employees all over the city, and have no way to find out who lives where.

Pros

Great benefits package, and lots of time off if you can afford to travel. Not a bad place to get licensed and leave or work at before retirement. Will get promoted really fast if you fall if you are a great net-worker and fall into one of there ACE programs.

Cons

Management treats you like children. They ask for your opinion and then they do what they want to do. Micromanagement style. Works good for people who drink the "cool-aide". Very top heavy organization who does not know as of this point which direction they want to go for the future. Punish employees who have different opinions about how things should be done but are not agreed upon by management.

Advice to Senior Management

Change the pay structure to retain top talent. Get rid of management who do not provide any benefit to the company.

Pros

Very good benefits package and decent work/life balance.

Cons

The decisions made by management are born out of a need to put feathers on caps rather than serve the needs of the clients. Internally, their organization restructuring has a terrible impact on morale. The changes I've personally witnessed show clearly Vanguard's disregard for experience and specialized knowledge. They do not respect their long-term loyal employees. For example, currently they are restructuring Flagship. They have hired mainly outside reps, and they have denied positions to current reps who are now forced to continue servicing their existing clients with smiles on their faces while given virtually no time to perform their new task of going out and finding a job within the company. Now the clients who are being serviced by these new outside people are suffering while these rookies are trying to figure out the Vanguard systems and process. Vanguard promised these clients that as Flagship members, they would get more experienced reps, but that is a promise they are ignoring.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more receptive to differing opinions and don't punish people for expressing them. Different ideas are good, even if you don't agree with them.

Pros

-Decent pay after two years or so. (I started at 32.5K/year w/ a college degree and 5+ years work experience)
-Three weeks paid vacation with option to purchase one additional week
-Tuition reimbursement (which I took advantage of)
-401k matching; however, you must stay for six years to become fully vested (I couldn't take any more of the company after 2.5 years)
-Overall, most of my coworkers were great people

Cons

-It's a call center and there are very few non-phone positions available.
-You'll likely be working 11:30 - 8:00 after you start in retail services. Be prepared to work that schedule for 1-2 years. Early shifts are hard to come by.
-Your ability to request vacation time is a lottery. I worked on Christmas Eve and NYE three years in a row.
-Zero telecommuting.
-Nearly all of your phone conversations are monitored and you rarely hear about what you're doing right as opposed to what you're doing wrong.
-You have to use break time to go to the bathroom.
-The phone calls never stop coming. The company was understaffed the entire time I was employed with them.
-Project One and the quest for each associate to wear many hats. I know it sounds great in theory but the products are complex and you need specialists.

Advice to Senior Management

Please do a bit more to help your best associates "Take Command of Their Careers." Place less emphasis on prepping employees to "master" the Vanguard "interview style," and place more emphasis on identifying the best people with natural abilities to be the leaders.

Pros

When you start out at the basic level of a phone rep, this is one of the only few companies that you can get the experience of talking to an investor directly besides Fidelity and Charles Schwab. Other mutual fund companies you only deal with the financial advisor at other brokerage firms. You'll work on a team (I prefer the word 'group' because it's really not a team; and this is a job, not a career).

You'll receive head to toe coverage: Medical, Dental, Vision, even a Life insurance policy while there. It is possible to move to other departments, but to do so, you'll have to set up sit-with's in that department, go through several mock interviews and make no mistake on your interviews. That's fine if they'd give you the time to do all of this, but they won't.

There are an incredible amount of resources available to help you and for the most part you can get the help that you need for even the most outrageous of client inquiries. I will say that it's a mixed pot when it comes to management. There are some with a high level of integrity and simply 'get it'. These individuals truly deserve recognition and accolades while others simply lack managerial experience and lack in leadership and people skills. It's inexplicable why these individuals are even fit for the lowest positions as supervisors in the organization and deserve to be demoted or fired.

Cons

This is an organization where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and vice versa. Upper management will make the most ridiculous of decisions to focus on, such as how often you use a web tech feature to co-browse the website with clients together or force an entire department to not take calls and 'act busy' to appease some decision made for no apparent reason. All of the assets Vanguard had pulled in over the past 2 years and they couldn't anticipate the demand for additional employees based upon the new business they pulled in.

There is absolutely no flexibility built into the system. If you need to flex your schedule for a doctors appointment or to volunteer at an organization, it's not going to happen. I was ill and missed days of work, but was scolded for my absenteeism. Even with a valid reason, benefits would not let up on what's called the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). I run into this often with smaller organizations, and essentially what it is for is for companies that are going to do the bare minimum for it's employees consult with FMLA in order to avoid being in violation of the bureau of labor.

From the client's perspective, their experience is getting worse and worse, with longer hold times, and as Vanguard loses its more talented and college educated employees you'll get a contractor who can't even answer the simplest of inquiries. And then they'll transfer you with another 10 minute hold on top of the 15 minute hold when you originally called in. I would have to approximate that 25 to 30% of Vanguard reps aren't suited to be answering your questions and will give you wrong information because they're too lazy to look up additional details.

It's a top down level management approach. I've worked there for 3 years and you really don't have an idea what any member of the management team really does. All I notice is that they relay bad news from the very top as it trickles down to the bottom. Their measure of success is only in how long it takes for a phone rep to answer the line, but is limited to that.

Your performance is purely on whether or not you made any mistakes where you start at 100% and can only lose, the more mistakes you make. Management has a way of quickly forgetting the good that you do, but dwelling on the bad forever and ever and ever. Even if you do the best of jobs, if management can't find something to critique you on, they'll just bring up what they can find from the year before. They'll hold you to a double standard saying that you have to take on more responsibility, but do so using less time.

Vanguard is a purely reactive company that's structured around the service of the calls that come in. This is what's referred to as a push system in supply chain management and is prone to inefficiencies. Since I've joined, it's gotten progressively worse in terms of their service and their convoluted expectations for crew members to keep calls under 5 minutes long, including the time it takes to conclude the call and tie up all of the loose ends. I've never worked for a company that made me feel bad for working hard.

I've seen several individuals retire from this company and if it wasn't for other caring individuals; this company couldn't care less your years of devout service. The only consolation you get from them is a glass bowl and a short message from the companies CEO. It's because there are hundreds of people on hold, so you get back to back calls; 30 minute lunches on a daily basis and all of your meetings will be cancelled.

Advice to Senior Management

Vanguard brags all the time about it's structure and how it benefits the shareholders; but what about the 'stakeholders' as well? Because it operates 'at cost' this is a company that's afraid to make money and yet is all about lean operations. Because of it's low expense ratios, it doesn't cost anything really to invest with them. Now, point taken, but at the same time Vanguard can't attract top level portfolio managers to manage their funds. You may do well on some of your investments and an index fund can make sense, but remember this is a company that doesn't pay those investment firms who manage the funds very well.

So, if the stock market is truly a zero-sum game, which Vanguard believes that it is, as a result other fund families get a larger piece of the pie and it's the Vanguard shareholders that are left with the bottom of the barrel.

There are simple things that can be adjusted on the technology side that could dramatically reduce the number of calls that come in. The company made significant errors when making their forms available online and half the calls that come into Vanguard are web related in some way. If you have trouble with downloading some of their forms, it's because they fouled up the scripts and they don't match up with your computer to view the file.

I wonder why a company that claims to have such a sterling brand name and is claims to be the industry standard for integrity won't disclose their financial statements. The structure of the company doesn't lend itself to this, but for it's employees it's a guessing game to whether or not you'll even get your one and only bonus in mid-year. It's so complicated and confusing on how partnership works; but if 2008 was any indicator of Vanguard's financial health, now that they've made admiral shares more available to the common investor there is no doubt that their revenue stream has been put on the south beach diet. I feel sorry for the employees in 2011 because I would bet that partnership will be next to nothing, even before the 40% withholding and if the unit value was $106 last year, this year it might not even break $95.

When Vanguard makes a mistake on a client's account, it's not just one mistake but several; because that one original mistake set off a chain reaction for 3 to 4 others to occur. Their processors will ignore certain details on paperwork

Oh, and that certified financial plan that you may have paid a fee for at a price tag of $250 or $1,000 for; notice that the only real advise you received was to buy into the Vanguard total stock, total bond and total international index fund and tell you to hold onto them forever. Are you really doing what's best for your clients or what's best for your bottom line?

Pros

Team oriented environment and great training for the crew.

Cons

Most of the job opportunities are in PA.

Advice to Senior Management

none