Pros
The Pros Large, diverse workforce with people from literally all over the world - you meet mostly really great characters but also some world class corporate duds. Very international working environment and exposure to international clients as you would expect. Free 'snacks' and drinks in a well-kitted pantry (though the novelty quickly wears off leaving you only with the bitter taste of a poor cup of coffee). Training is in general quite good - but be ready for fast paced learning, where i.e. you are taught a condensed version of Portfolio theory in a day, and then are expected to sit an exam on what you've learned the following day at 8:00 am...not leaving you much time to absorb the knowledge, and inducing some university-style cramming. In that sense it helps a lot to come from a 'finance' background where you have studied the stuff before - but this is not essential as they spoon-feed you the knowledge to start with - many hires come from non-finance backgrounds. Competitive salary - especially for recent graduates (£37,250 base plus £4,000 performance related bonus). Finally, you'll learn how to use, and become an expert on using a terminal, where, if you are looking to kick start a career in Finance, this will be an invaluable addition to the CV. Oh and they throw a ridiculously good party once a year with free drinks, food and theme-park style rides. It turns into a rave once the families go home.
Cons
I'll start from the beginning.... - The 'Financial Product Sales & Analytics' job title is a sham. It's quite literally customer service/support for Bloomberg terminal users - where basically you're the guy on the other end of the HELP HELP button on the terminal, that's it, definitely not as 'sexy' as the title tries to make it out to be. - They will dress up the position as a 'great way into the company, and an opportunity to learn about the product and industry' and promise that it is simply temporary before rotating into the Sales department (which is basically the same job but with less micro management and you get to travel). This is a lie. Your rotation into Sales is wholly based on what the business needs and your language skills. If you're a Spanish/French/non-language speaker, doesn't matter how good you are, you're staying in 'Analytics' (customer service) for the long-haul (at the very least 1.5 - 2 years if not longer). The only 'regional team' that sees semi-regular rotation into Sales are the Germans - If you've worked customer service before, you'll know what this job is like. Similar to a call centre but the problems customers come to you with are usually a lot more complex and require brains to work out. Add to this the fact you need to at any one time be dealing with between 2-4 customers, it produces a perfect cocktail of angst, anxiety and unnecessary stress, compounded by the sheer ineptitude of the management in the department who strut the floor like headless chickens (i will dedicate more words to this later on). - Your performance is completely and solely quantified into numbers. EVERYTHING is driven by 'metrics' i.e. how many customers you called on the phone, how long you took to answer a 'ticket', how much of the working day you spent taking tickets, etc. etc. the list is endless. They set these standards that someone has simply imagined over-night as the true gauge for good quality service, and if you don't 'keep-up' these standards, boy o boy you're in trouble. On top of that you get QC'd (quality control) where if you make a simple mistake, this will count negatively on your performance with no way to amend - all this combined leads to an obsession around 'getting your stats up'... needless to say this gets boring very quickly and causes completely unnecessary frustration, where even if you are actually doing a great job, it can look like you are absolutely dreadful. - MICRO MANAGEMENT GALORE... the analytics department is THE true embodiment of the phrase 'micro management'. As detailed above, absolutely everything you do gets filtered down into numbers, and management is obsessed with imposing their standards to the point that you'll often get shivers from the smelly warm breath of having them on your back. - Bureaucracy is a big part of the day to day in the analytics department. If you've got any kind of opinion, you better keep your mouth shut, as anything you say that might challenge the status quo simply counts against you - to the point where they will even try to push you out of the company. They don't value creativity or individuality at all - this means you'll often find yourself surrounded by drones resembling human beings which have been aptly named 'Bloombots'. These folk are the ones willing to jump over whatever hoops necessary to 'stand out', no matter how ludicrous, and have stapled a fake peroxide smile to their face. - You are FUNGIBLE, no really, you are. At least according to the global head of the department who mistakenly (or maybe intentionally) sent an email to everyone titled "Analytics - Building a Flexible, Fungible Workforce'. Don't worry though, if you don't have a spine and are happy to keep your mouth shut for the rest of your life then you'll find great job security here! - The Management... well from what you've read so far you can see that the people who end up staying at the company are doing it either out of necessity (money, family, etc.), or purely complacency with a 'comfortable' job. This really doesn't leave much and they are completely power drunk, often imposing their authority at the expense of others. - ATTRITION, yes you guessed it, the Analytics department sees vast amounts of people leaving within the first year of employment, myself included, for better or simply more rewarding roles. E.g. out of my 'starting class' of around 26 people, only 6 were still in analytics once a year had gone past...and I can assure you that none those 6 remainders want to be there. But this is how their operating model is built. They want to filter through the 'Bloombots' and filter out anyone who doesn't wish to conform, with a small group nestled somewhere in the middle who have navigated the field to relative comfort.