Pros
The regional & area managers are fine, good as regular human beings. The company however should not be trusted. The company stresses the field managers who in return stress the employees. Halal Job, but there are also alot of other halal jobs in the US.
Cons
Job security: You will never feel Job security. You can even speak with account executives in your city and ask them if they ever felt job security, they will tell you that they never feel job security & are always expecting to either get fired, lose their draw or salary (For AEs hired long time ago), The company continuously threatens AEs which has made it a toxic work environment. Extremely high turnover, people quitting right and left (For good reason). Even AE;s that close a good amount of files and were hired long time ago with a salary, will tell you that even when the economy was good (Which is extremely bad now), they still did not feel job security. (When you are asked where you see yourself next year, you should be able to see yourself within the same company, if you ask senior AEs with guidance, they will tell you they don’t know where they will be after 6 months..That will tell you everything) Income: you don;t get a salary as a new hire (They used too), pay is extremely low compared with conventional mortgage companies (Even if you are paid salary),also very low compared with other Islamic mortgage companies pay structure commission, the only reason some account executives that want to stay in the mortgage industry, are not quitting and going to the other Islamic mortgage companies, is that unfortunately Guidance is the only national one that is 100% Halal per AMJA so the company takes advantage of you since you care about your religion. Stress: This job is extremely stressful & the company’s toxic environment does not help. Benefits: The company provides 401k covers a bit of health insurance (Not all of it, you still need to pay a lot for health insurance),Which all companies provide. The company does NOT offer paid time off (Unless your corporate) does NOT have maternity or such leave. Other companies have far better benefits. Companies view of its field account executive: The company does not care of its field employees, it sees them as numbers, it expects them to be modern day slaves while paying them so below than what loan officers in the industry get paid. They distinguish between account executives that work at the corporate office in VA and also give corporate office account executives paid time off other benefits. (Field account executives do NOT get paid time off which almost all companies in the US provide) Thus the benefits are extremely bad. Work Experience: THIS EXPERIENCE can NOT HELP YOU for your future. the reason is because if you’re working for Guidance, you’re doing it since it’s not Riba based, but when you realize that you no longer want to work for the company, its experience does not help you because you won’t be joining other mortgage companies due to Riba. If you want experience in sale's, try to get a sales job at tech companies or such, because you'll always be able to use that experience. Daily work schedule: They expect you to work at least 6 days a week & after hours in the evening & would comment if you don’t want to work Saturday’s or after hours. They tell you they want you to be a field executive and tell you to go out and meet realtors & go to their offices to promote Guidance. In the same time they expect you to make so many cold calls during the day that you don’t have time to do business development in the field. So they want you to always be beside the phone making calls & answering concierge calls to get leads (Which is not easy to answer calls since the phone rings to everyone in the same time, whoever answers it first, gets the lead, the majority of time’s the phone rings a quarter of a ring before someone else already answered it), while at the same time being outside doing business development which of course is unrealistic. (And again, corporate account executives get better benefits than field executives even though field executives are expected to work more harder. Corporate employees also have like 30+ state’s licenses while non corporate only have a few states which means less leads which is why corporate account executives have so much more closings than non-corporate) You are also expected to visit different mosques every night during the weekdays and weekends to promote guidance, no work life balance ever. You even have to set up a table give out flyers every Friday prayer, so you even work during Friday prayer.. They even took away the comfort of going to Friday prayer which used to give peace.. Guidance’s really tries to only hire people that are desperate and have no where else to go. If you are desperate and can not get a job at any other company, join Guidance but don’t stop applying to other companies, so when you find a good company to go too, you can leave guidance. This is not a company where you build your career, this is not even a company where you can gain experience then take elsewhere, this is a short-lived steppingstone if you are unfortunate enough to step on it.
