Pros
- Got paid to pass series 7, series 66 and insurance exams - Established FAs generally supportive and friendly - Good reputation. - Complicated hiring process generally yields high quality candidates. - A sort of sales training boot camp that is as valuable as it is difficult, it definitely weeds out the cry babies. - I got a new job with better benefits, better pay and less stress within a month after leaving Jones.
Cons
- "Flexibility" doesn't mean much when you're a new FA putting in 70 hours/week. - VERY high stress and low pay in the first years. - Company can be difficult to work with: I had hundreds of thousand of $s in "C" share orders REFUSED because compliance said it wasn't in the best interest of the client, even though it clearly produced the lowest cost over the time horizon the client wanted. They want the FAs to sell only mutual fund A-shares. This was definitely not consistent with the company mantra of "always do what is best for the client". - Health Savings Account salary deductions were mysteriously never credited to my HSA account until I wrote a letter to the company. The were finally credited to my account nearly one year after the deductions began. I certainly would not have expected this sort of problem from a company of Jones reputation. - Even if you don't "make the cut" they really get a lot of juice out of you: I was able to gather about $1 mln in assets in my first 6 months of door to door, and along with that, my top 7 clients had about $30 million in investable household assets. Despite this, I was told that I didn't have enough new accounts and was canned. The silver lining is that despite feeling like a bit of a chump, I was really relieved to move on. - Some newer FAs who aren't lucky enough to get fired end up staying on despite financial hardship because they are worried that Jones could come after them to collect the supposed $75k in training costs.