Great Place to Build a Financial Services Career
Pros
After a year of interviewing various large and small financial services firms in the Washington, D.C. area I decided to enter the industry and build my practice with AXA. The leadership of the D.C. branch comes from a position of industry experience and success. It is important to me to have a leadership team that made the commitment to build their own successful financial practices and prove themselves in the industry, so that I can be confident in their guidance and advice in building my own practice. What is very appealing and encouraging with this firm is the office culture is one that emphasizes joint work with experienced advisors, comprehensive training, and most importantly self accountability in building my practice. I'm very happy with my results and experiences at AXA.
Cons
Entering the financial services industry as an advisor working directly with clients is challenging. Challenging not just at AXA, but at any financial firm. This can be frustrating. Work-life balance is tough to start out because it takes time and commitment to build a successful practice. However, once your practice builds momentum the work-life balance improves greatly and provides more flexibility than any other career I have worked in. A challenge that I experienced is that coming on board is not taking a job, but building a practice. That mental shift from being an employee to being a business owner building my financial services practice was a bit of a struggle, but it is essential to understand to be successful.
