Pros
I am in my second decade with the firm and I am so happy I chose to work here out of college. Family Owned: This company takes care of its people. I have been through 3 major economic downturns in my career and the firm always takes the long view and does cut into muscle and bone during trying times. The Johnson family thinks in the here and now, but they also have a view 50 years out. They are humble and grounded individuals that are always looking for opportunities to improve our business and our employee experience. Benefits: We are industry leading, period. Childcare assistance, tuition reimbursement, college loan repayment, healthy meals at a deeply discounted rate, onsite gyms, onsite healthcare facilities, onsite CFP programs, 6 months of leave for moms, computer purchase assistance, etc, etc, etc... If that wasn't enough, the firm isn't comfortable with out offering in this space. We are in the midst of a major benefits reassessment. Abby and her new head of HR are leading the charge in this effort. Work Environment: The family and the company goes to great length to ensure we have the best facilities for our teams. Our major corporate campuses are spread across the country in beautiful locations. While Fidelity is a conservative company, they build our buildings to last centuries and the are constantly refreshing them. I have read many posts about the call center environments. I felt compelled to respond. Call centers with any company are tough. There is no way around it, it is a tough job. However, it is an entry level position where you can learn a lot in and then leverage that learning to different roles in the future. I know of 5 Executive Vice Presidents, several SVPs, and VPs who started in the same positions at the firm. If you are coming out of college, you will likely start in an entry level position at some firm and you will have plenty of opportunities to work up and sideways from there. The firm could do a better job of facilitating that movement, but I will mention it further in the "cons" section.
Cons
Career counseling: Many of us were told early in our career that you needed to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps when it comes to career planning. Essentially meaning, the cream will rise to the top, and the driven folks will figure it out. While there is merit in this strategy,it is outdated for the size of our company. Like many companies of our size it can become difficult to navigate. I feel that is why many of the comments on glassdoor related to this topic are correct from the perspective of the person writing the review. However, this is absolutely not the intention of senior leadership. The leadership team wants to hire college grads and watch them progress out of entry level positions and branch out throughout the business. The individuals who do, are generally immensely successful. The problem lies in the lack of programmatic career planning conversations and marketing of the internal opportunities and job matching. To their credit, the firm has recognized this issue and I have heard is working on building career centers to help facilitate these dialogues and career plans. I would expect comments related to issue to start to subside as this rolls out. To make a long story short, the sr. team has shown that they care and want to help find the solution. HR systems and training: Simply put, we have antiquated systems in HR, and training needs to be modernized to adapt to the way college grads learn. A better mix of classroom training integrated with a lacking digital solution that ties to our HR systems. HR system and staffing: HR needs an overhaul. Specifically in staffing. We have a very traditional model and staffing and HR are loaded with career HR and staffing people. We need to take a cue from Silicon Valley companies and add more business consultants and business leaders to the HR function to modernize it. We need to keep about a 1/3 of this business unit as traditional HR and Staffing consultants, but there is a serious lack of creativity and challenge of old processes because of the the similar backgrounds of everyone in the group. Until we do, we are destined to be average in this space.