Pros
Vanguard's benefits are solid, their corporate culture absolutely demands respect from its management to its employees--at least in the personal, though not professional sense. Employees are never asked to do anything morally questionable. And employees are asked only infrequently to work only minimal overtime: Vanguard's "work-life balance" is superb. This means that Vanguard can be a great choice for someone looking to meet the basic requirements of "a decent job." But it does not meet the requirements of a career.
Cons
If you are applying to be a Client Relationship Associate in Institutional Participant Services, Retail, or Brokerage, you need to know this: you will not like your job. It's just the bottom line. In your interview, ask specific questions. "Today, how much time between phone calls did the typical associate have?" If your interviewer is being honest, he will say "there was no time; a beep in your ear will follow the end of your last call and will start your next". Then ask, "why, were you unusually busy today?" The honest interviewer will say "to be most cost-efficient, we design our systems so that associates have as little time as possible between calls, while making sure callers wait about 20 seconds before being answered. If callers are answered sooner than that, we're overstaffed". Then think about that for a moment. "My job is to take as many calls as I possibly can during my entire shift?" "Yes", should come the answer--"except you get a thirty minute break and a one hour lunch". You are applying to a job in a call center. Don't stop there. Ask "what are the people like to whom I would talk, generally?" "About half are fine. The other half are impatient, about a quarter of which are disrespectful. The most frequent callers, who make up about 80% of all your calls, are unable to 'self-provision', a term we use to simply mean 'do a simple transaction yourself online', and their inability to 'self-provision' often leads to their having a difficult time following your instructions or understanding your explanations. The most enjoyable callers--wealthy, professional types, call in the least." "The recruiter told me 'don't worry, at Vanguard, we hire almost completely from within, and are committed to seeing you promoted early and often.' Is that true? To what jobs are CRAs most frequently promoted, at first". "Other jobs on the phones in the call center". "How long does it take to become a [what you really want to be at Vanguard]." "Well, at least 18 months by policy, but almost certainly about a decade. Vanguard hires a lot of people to staff call centers--thousands, in fact. There are maybe 20 jobs at Vanguard that really involve [what you really want to be at Vanguard]. Now, there are maybe another 50 that support those 20 people. And that's pretty much it. People who finally get one of those 70 jobs hold onto them for dear life. So, yes, we do offer almost all our "cool jobs" to people already hired, and every time we do--and it seems a posting for a 'cool job' comes along once every week--we get about 40 internal applicants, and we choose only one--usually someone a 'friend of a friend' asked us to hire. However, we always need people to staff our call centers (or our processing centers, etc.), so we will encourage you to apply to those jobs. Actually, we will discourage you from applying outside certain department into which you have been hired, since we know everyone would leave those departments if given a real chance.' "How interesting is my job?" "At Vanguard--as you'll hear in corporate orientation, and, really, anywhere online if you care to look, our philosophy is 'choose us because we cost less'. Interesting jobs cost too much. We've found that training you in a narrow skill set as quickly as possible, and then putting you to work employing that skill set over and over again until, to be quite honest, you burn out and either start performing poorly or looking for a new job, is the cheapest." Follow up on this. "So, you're saying that I'll be doing the same thing over and over again?" "Oh, yes. You'll take about 2 basic types of calls. We try to route only those calls to you; however, if you receive one which is not intended for you, you'll transfer the call--you'll transfer at least one of every three of your calls. To handle calls you don't transfer, you'll read scrips and use a step-by-step 'dummy proof' program. You'll memorize these scrips. You'll read them about 40 times each day. You'll also memorize your answers to the questions you'll be asked over and over. In fact, in any given call, about 40% of what you are saying is either a script or it is a response you've memorized. You will experience pure joy when your shift finally comes to an end." "What happens if I do my job very well and handle calls quickly and efficiently?" "You'll get more calls." "Do we get paid well?" "Not really, no. But the benefits are pretty good, so there's that..." Be very wary of accepting a job as a CRA in a Vanguard call center--especially if you have another option.
