Pros
You can make good money, especially if you can take over an office. When you are first hired they pay you to sit at home and take the tests. They pay you a decent salary for the first couple years to help you pay your bills. Great training, they pay air fair, hotel, and food.
Cons
Once you pass all your tests, that is when the frustration really starts. They want you out knocking on doors and trying to get phone numbers from people. I was verbally abused and threatened several times. One of the girls out of my class had to cal the police. At this point you are not licensed and you cannot cal yourself a Financial Advisor. You tell people "I work for Edward Jones and I am opening a new office in town" which is a lie part of the time, because once you get licensed you may end up in another city. They want you to get around 250-500 phone numbers, so when you get to Launch Your Practice, you can call all these people. Not many people want you knocking on their door and asking them for phone numbers. The door knocking will continue. HERE IS THE PART THEY DIDN'T TELL ME, even though I asked. Once you get your license and you are a Financial Advisor, you have 17 weeks to hit a certain bench mark of NEW ASSETS not current clients of Edward Jones and if you don't they can and have fired people. Then if do hit the first bench mark, you must continue to stay at a certain level or you can be put on a Personal Improvement Plan. It is a rolling 4 months, so very 4 months your last new assets fall off and you must have more. The reason I stress this is that you want to take considerable thought to moving or leaving your current job before going to Edward Jones. They are also hiring A LOT of Financial Advisors and saturating certain areas, which has created some hard feelings and backstabbing. It is all about resource scarcity. There is also a lot of favoritism. You have FAs that are working their butts off and then a child of a current FA gets hired, they give offices and clients to these kids or even spouses. Here is the other thing. All this door knocking is advertisement for Edward Jones. Don't think you can use social media very much, compliance really restricts what you can do, and it is only on Facebook and LinkedIn. There is a high turn over. Most of the new assets that the new advisors bring into the company stay with the company if you get fired or leave the company. Edward Jones talks about building relationships with the community, but in the end it is all about money and new assets. They argue and say it isn't and they do this for you to get your business up and running. Part of that maybe true, but if it is then they wouldn't fire people all the time. But, they also get onto FAs who have been there a long time. Bottom line is it is a sales position, with benchmarks you have to hit.