Grads - Read this before applying - Anonymous employee deVere Group Employee Review

I went to Malta for the 6 weeks and then got sent to Dubai. Malta was very unorganised but fair play to Mark Reed he does his best and is an extremely nice guy. Lindsey has been the best person I have worked with. Nigel is an exceptional speaker. At the end of Malta they ask you to write one of these reviews on the office computers and you have no choice. Malta is completely different to Dubai, Malta has a structure but Dubai is embarrassing. When Nigel comes into the office in Dubai managers change and are really nice to you and then when he leaves they just motivate you through fear and tell you that you are worthless and if you don't get a good call time or don't make business you are going because you are a waste of space basically. even couple of weeks they tell get all the coordinators in a room and tell you how bad you are all doing and you need to sort it out. When i was there for my stay around each month there would be 15 or so new people start and around 10 leave. You are just a number to them, if you don't make money you are invisible to them. You are expected to go out and find data and even buy the data from companies like car rental places, go back to the office and then call them all day. I had a meeting because i wasn't working hard enough, i was working 8am till 6:30-7pm and then i got questioned to why i didn't come in on the weekends. In Malta you have CISI level 1 paid for and then after that you have to pay for everything and you are not allowed to look at you book in working hours. so you have to do it all after work. To be honest they couldn't care less if you got your qualifications or not. Some advisors who have been there 2 years have only got level 1 and they don't get questioned because they are making money. You do not learn how to be good at your job which is a financial adviser/wealth manager, you become an expert on selling the fees of saving plans and an expert on answering questions potential client have about the fees and that is it. that is what makes the money. After that and after they have got the money out of them they either are passed to a new adviser who skips the coordinator role and they have to deal with the complains of the plan not making money. This job is a sales role in a call centre format. all you are assessed on is your call time and amount of meetings you book, that is it. Get your visa before you go to dubai, if you don't you have to do a visa run every month which is a 5 hour drive to Oman and costs around 50 pounds each time (you do this on a weekend). Managers have no idea. seriously no idea. seriously. They try to motivate through fear and go on about how great they are and how when they started they made loads of money and how great they are, one of the first conversations i had with my senior manager was with a fellow graduate, he stood there and pointed to us both and said "i make more money than both your parents combined". What they say you are going to earn is also not accurate, in one of our weekly meetings all of the coordinators got told why are you going out so much (even though the weekend before we got told off because we wasn't networking enough) anyway he said why are you going out so much, this job is made so you can only afford a couple of pints on the weekend, when you get adviser/consultant thats when you make the money. Numerous occasions you are threatened to being let go. We also got told if we are thinking about taking any holidays in your first year then you need to question your commitment to the job. If you think you are gods gift, arrogant and think everyone likes you then you will fit in perfectly. Mark Reed and Nigel are nice guys, I don't think they know what actually happens in Dubai with the grads and coordinators and thats why the staff turnover is 80% each year. They let anyone through the door knowing some will stay and if you leave then they don't care anyway. Simple diseconomies of scale, company has got to big to fast and poor Nigel cant control everything, I'm sure if he knew he would change it. My advice to you if you really want this job is to stay in Malta. In Malta they only sell pension transfers and yes some people will really benefit from a pension transfer but what some people don't know is that if you transfer your pension that the advisor get a healthy commission from your pension, around 5%. If you want to get good at your job and get qualified then do not work for deVere, if you want to wait 2-3 years to be a consultant and then have the chance of making a lot of money OFF OTHER PEOPLES MONEY then this is the job for you. If you have a degree then there is better options.