- Corporate culture is very cultish. You’re constantly told about how happy everyone is to he there, how they never want to leave and have been there for a long time (10-20 years for some people, though notably these people are usually middle managers or salespeople and not phone reps), how Schwab somehow wins high employee satisfaction rewards, etc.
If this is true, then why is it you never seen anyone smile in the halls? Once management gets a whiff of dissent, their manners towards that employee completely shift. Four of my colleagues over the years were victims of this.
- You are not a broker. You are a service specialist. Majority of your calls are a skillset they push on you, such as “ID Theft” (unlocking online logins and enhanced verification when people forget security questions) or “Bank” (assisting with debit cards). You also frequently get tech support calls that you are expected to handle. Support departments often give you pushback and do not want to take the call.
The broker calls you do get are simply glorified order taking. You cannot give advice. Schwab’s website does not have any advice capabilities, so you are placed in an impossible situation of needing to “fulfill the client’s need” while not being able to actually fulfill this need. Of course, this is your fault. No accountability for others.
- Training is terrible. It mostly consists of you being given a new skillset, thrown on the phones, and hopefully figuring it out. If you mess up, again the blame is on you. No accountability for others.
- Lied to about opportunity. They tell you there are so many places to go and Schwab will support your career growth, but career growth is absolutely non-existent. It is not a meritocracy. It’s about who you know. And it’s a good ol boys club. Minorities and women need not apply to these higher positions. And if your director doesn’t like you, good luck doing anything but phone calls.
In my 2 years on a top-performing team metrics-wise, I had 5 managers, 2 people actually move on to a new role (1 was a lateral move), and 4 people leave the company. There was no accountability for the incompetence of management, or for their empty promises that were walked back for a previously undisclosed disqualifying reason, lack of support, etc.
- Management dodges accountability from top to bottom. There were always excuses for not getting basic things done like U4 paperwork to be able to sit for a FINRA exam, pay increases, reimbursement requests, etc. There were also excuses for not coaching, not educating reps, not communicate changes resulting in reps making errors, etc. Some managers were on top of this. The ones who weren’t shifted blame all around, but it always ultimately fell on the powerless rep who could not push the blame elsewhere. Directors supported this blame shifting because they themselves did it, and management culture always is learned from top down.
Excuses, excuses, excuses are all you ever hear from management. There is no accountability in this company whatsoever and, as a phone rep, there is not a single thing you can do about it.
This leads to a culture of dodging accountability firm-wide. Calls are blind transferred to you so people don’t have to deal with a difficult call, and you will do the same to others. After all, if you give wrong information, you will be “coached” or otherwise disciplined. If you pass the call off however, literally nothing happens to you.
- Frustrating new metrics. The metrics for 2020 are designed against you. A survey that is not a perfect 7 out of 7 counts as a 0. I have received “0’s” with comments full of thank you’s and appreciation. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t add up. And thanks to the good ol boys culture of promotion that is rampant here, these metrics are often used to keep people on the phones and promote management’s favorites.
But they’ll tell you: “We don’t care about metrics.”
There are many many other things but hopefully this gives an idea of the disconnect between what you are told this job and company will be, and what this job and company actually are.
