Pros
Opportunity to interact face to face with financial professionals CFA is paid for and you can get bonuses (but you have to stay a few years until it's vested) Benefits are amazing - 3 wks vacation, good dental, vision, health Free food M-Th (or con? this is a ploy to have you stay at your desk and work through lunch) Excellent training -- you'll be sent to Norwalk or London for initial training which lasts a month, and then to accounts training a few months later which lasts for about a week; you'll get a stipend and your hotel will be paid for People -- most are nice; there are a few nasty people and office politics is inevitable, but overall a good environment with smart and friendly coleagues
Cons
Know what you're getting into--this is NOT a finance job no matter how they spin it, it's a tech support job that revolves around financial data. When I was working it was phones support all the time. My friend who still works there says that they now have instant messaging. You'll be on phones or instant messaging minimum 5, sometimes 8 hours a day for your first few months. If you get a call you're expected to figure out the solution on the fly. If you can't you'll have to get back to the client, and then go on ready for another call. As you might guess your workload just piles up more and more unless you figure out a system on your own to stop that. There's a app that monitor's everybody's time on phones, how many calls they took and other stats. You'll feel like you're being micromanaged--because it's true. If you are stressed out easily, DON'T apply here. Once you move onto accounts and have your own clients, don't expect the workload to get any easier. There can easily be 300+ clients that you're responsible for supporting. If they have a question on how to build a formula or format a graph, the burden is on you to get it done. For 90% of the time your clients are the ones who are doing the analysis, and you are the tool they'll be using to get that analysis done. Many times you will feel like you are being used by your clients. It doesn't come as a surprise that during my first few months working there 4 or 5 of my collegues who were hired around the same time as me left to pursue better opportunities. I should have left earlier, as I was looking for a true finance related job. For the first year you'll be working--a lot. They may say during the interview that there's a great work life balance, but more often than not meetings/reviews/online classes will be scheduled during your lunch hour. Lunch "hour" is more like Like "half-hour" as 4 out of 5 times you'll still be on phones. If you get a call at 12:29 it's your duty to stay on until that call is done; if that call ends at 1:00, well, you're lunchtime just got cut 30 minutes. I was easily working over 60 hours when I started, and I know some of my colleagues who were working even more, especially when their client requests piled up. As many other reviewers said, there is little room for advancement if you don't want to go into sales down the road or product development. Salary -- below industry average, with rent easily 18,000 a year where I lived, that was a third of my salary gone.
