Pros
- Autonomy - Heavily involved in the community - Your own office and Branch Office Administrator - Conducting educational workshops to build your practice - Ability to eventually make a lot of money - Training is thorough and top notch - Excellent place to start your career in the industry
Cons
There is a gross lack of transparency when it comes to pay. It took receiving one (of four) $0.00 paycheck and several calls to home office until someone was able to fully explain the compensation structure. Your commissions are essentially held until year 4 when your branch becomes profitable. It's indoctrinated in you that you're "building your business" but you're not. You're more accurately building your practice. Speaking with independent advisors whose commission pay out is 80-90% while the Edward Jones commission payout is maybe 20%, there is an obvious disparity in compensation when you're truly building your own business. I spoke with numerous advisors at Edward Jones who have made it and all of them explained that the only way they were able to financially make it in the beginning is because of external help. This was NOT explained in the recruitment process. I was told that without 3 years savings, taking equity out of your home, living in a two income house, utilizing government help, borrowing from family members or taking a loan from Edward Jones, that an FA will probably not make it. Unfortunately Edward Jones is truly archaic when it comes to compensation for new FAs compared to their competition. Having autonomy and an office assistant doesn't matter if you aren't making any real money.