The Vanguard Group Reviews

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

Ample amount of personal time off
Reasonable Medical Benefits (changing for 2012 on)
Never take the job home with you
Training resources

Cons

Compensation is well below industry average (if your not licensed they start you at 31,500, licensed 33,000)
Every minute of the day is scheduled and monitored
Career Middle Managers don't necessarily understand procedure and often unwilling/unable to aid
Dissemination of information is poorly managed
Terrible worker morale, bordering on depression
Uneducated, occasionally hostile clientele
Lack of accountability for own work

Advice to Senior Management

The morale on the floor is very bleak. You'd be hard pressed to find an associate who actually enjoys what they do on a daily basis. Good performance in job is usually rewarded by not having to do your job, i.e, you get ad-hoc projects and coaching/training opportunities.

Time in job requirements make employees feel trapped and demotivates them. (18 months)
The size of the company is perfect if your looking to hide in your cubicle and not have to answer for your own mistakes. But for a motivated, intelligent professional Vanguard can strip you of your desire and the stringent requirements for what must be done and said and what can't be done and said will engender a feeling in yourself that you are actually incapable of more.

If you are interested in working for Vanguard and you have no other options, this might be for you, but if you aspire for more professionally look else where.

Pros

The way the company is set up is great. This was an entry level position for me, and they had a program that took two years, but would put you into a management position right after that. Pretty great. They pride themselves on never having had a lay-off. They give you time off to study if your job requires that you get licenses (I had a month and a half of paid "no work" time in order to study and test for my Series 6 and 63). I believe that they will do that for the Series 7 too if you go into brokerage. They match 5% of your 401(k) contributions.

Cons

They are only located in Scottsdale, AZ, and Valley Forge, PA. So you had better want to live in one of those spots. Pay is bad. Starting salary for my entry level job was $33,500.00 non-netgotiable. I was in a management meeting once and even management was joking about how bad the pay was (but they say that they make up for it in job security, by never having a lay-off). Dress is very conservative. Even non-client-facing positions require guys to wear suits and ties (except in summer they're allowed to wear a polo because of the heat in AZ). Women must even wear stockings under their pants (my manager actually enforced this, but I've heard that some let it slide).

Advice to Senior Management

I think management is set up great at Vanguard! It's just a bummer that pay is so low.

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

Wal-Mart of financial services. What do I mean? Great place to shop and be a customer. Best prices and selection around. But do you really want to work there? Probably not.
Can't speak of other sites. But CLT only has Client Services (phone), Processing, and IT. So as far as advancement, I was lucky enough to move up very quickly, but once you get to supervisor, there's not much else you can do. Not a lot of other functions available in CLT. Very little HR, no marketing, 1 person compliance, etc.

Cons

So politically correct and "fair" that things become unfair if that makes sense. Example. Year end is based on 5 levels. Exceeds, meets, does not meet, etc.
2 years in a row I received exceeds (highest available), and got a whopping 3.5 and 4.25% raise respectively. According to internal info, Exceeds should receive a raise "up to" 10%. Ok, I understand "up to". But 4.25% is pathetic. Considering that year, I knew people that received 4% for receiving the next level down.

Pros

PTO ,casual dress
Decent health care,
Nice partnership payouts
Benefits start the day you do

Cons

Management not in tuned with their staff, high turnover in certain departments.Upper management needs to set the tone and in a positive way. If you want your staff to care about their work, show some appreciation .

Advice to Senior Management

When you do the crews surveys take them serious ,talk to the staff and find out how they really feel about the company. Main campus is very different then the different sites especially Devon Park.The morale is down because the goals are impossible to reach for any human.

Pros

They were alwasys on the bandwagon for the lastest book to inspire management and would give the books out for free. Offer courses on anything you want to learn to enhance your skill set.

Cons

Wants everyone to think outside the box yet fails to embrace the new ideas.
Cult like enviroment, take assimliation to a whole new level.
Managers have been "encouraged" to step down and then forced to work side by side as peers with crew they use to managed.
Careers of tenured crew can be derailed based on one bad review regardless of validity of the review.

Advice to Senior Management

Embrace diversity.
When you continuously hear that a manager is not doing a good job do not let it fall on deaf ears.
Manage to success and career growth

Pros

Benefits are generous for a large company
Co-workers are nice and most are smart people
Customer Service training is beneficial in the long run
Good name to put on a resume

Cons

The job is brutal with very few promotion opportunities, it causes stagnation among the masses who are forced to accept mediocre pay and if your not careful a mediocre long-term career.

The people you talk to on the phone are hostile, uneducated, and have no understanding of financial markets. Most of your time is spent learning a proprietary CRM system which is not used by any other finance companies so you will not have any transferable skills if seeking employment outside of vanguard.

Lack of communication between Senior management and lower level employees is intentional and designed to keep people uniformed and lulled into a false sense of reality.

My recommendation - if you are comfortable making between 30-60k for your entire career, enjoy making "lateral" moves within the organization for no increase in pay, then Vanguard would be a good fit. If you are a driven person and ended up at Vanguard, don't quit immediately! Ride it out for 2 years, get your CFA level 1 and 2 out of the way or get a 680+ on the GMAT and go to a top business school.

Advice to Senior Management

The company is basically on auto-pilot so management doesn't really need to do much to maintain their competitive advantage. Senior management just needs to keep the expense ratios low and their ethical reputation pristine. My recommendation is to develop your employees or you will not be able to attract talent in the future.

Pros

It was a stable pay check and you knew what was expected out of you.
Overall the people I worked with were nice.

Cons

It was a call center.
The only way to advancement lead to over phone jobs.
No real financial work involved.

Advice to Senior Management

For the other office locations, such as Scottsdale, offer more advancement opportunities. Allow for growth outside the customer service segment.

Pros

The benefits are SECOND TO NONE.
The Vanguard University Program is Outstanding.

Outstanding technology that would make George Jetson blush.

Cons

I'm gonna keep this short and sweet:

There have been many downsides in the past few months; a great deal of terminations which brings the question of the way we are trained.

I've seen a great deal of apathy from management, conforming to procedures that I feel, they don't even believe in.

I'm seeing the morale at it's lowest.

Management: Mostly young and are educated, brillant and have the ambition for growth; but, there is a fine line between knowledge of procedures, functions and applications v. leading people from all backgrounds, from all walks of life and it takes a special person to have, to possess that type of attribute. You have some TLs and management from mid to higher levels who really don't have that gift or they're just looking out to cover their backsides; at the expense of the associates. It's all about fear and it always happens during an economic setback.

You do have some managers who are loyal and dedicated to their associates in different types of degree and we as the crewmembers struggle to drive to work through rain, wind and snow, we stay long hours and will bend over backwards to see to it that a new shareholder or beneficary is serviced correctly; even if it takes a few hours or a few days to do so. It should never be about productivity; it's about quality, like making a Rolls Royce, built by hand. That's how a company attains The Gold Standard; but, Vanguard wont attain that, if they'll use the practices of a 1920s assembly line.

We do so much for wages and salaries that are not that much. That's why some of us have other jobs working seven days a week, total.....and it's still not enough.

Advice to Senior Management

Some of you, not all of you are apathetic, talk a good game. You'll continue to use these practices to get over; but, one day, you'll make a big mistake and it will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Think it won't happen? For the real managers. Be an original leader; not a play it safe, stand behind procedures without questioning type leader. Listen to not just your mid level managers; speak to the associates and I mean with an open ear and once you've establish the right type of rapport, you'll truly listen and maybe see some of the concerns not shared by someone who feels intimidated.