customer service representative

personal banker

teller

mortgage loan originator

loan processor

CEFCU

Working at CEFCU is a mixed bag, and what you get one day could be completely different than the next. I'm using a former job title in writing this review, as I don't trust that I wouldn't face retaliation for posting this.

Firstly, benefits are good, but the pay is okay. HR explains that people who deal with members have more responsibilities, which is ultimately ridiculous. Back office employees who are not member facing have just as many if not more responsibilities in most cases, and can be paid less for the work.

While I'm on the topic of HR, they don't care about you, they have no issue making that abundantly clear either. During the height of the pandemic, CEFCU like many other companies offered "pandemic leave" which HR boasted about constantly. However, this leave was nothing more than a few days, which ran out quickly when you were not allowed to come into work if you were having ANY covid symptoms at all(nausea, slight cough, etc). So when a breakout happened in January of 2021(and again in Jaunary of 2022) what did CEFCU do for their employees that had exhausted that leave? They forced you to stay at home for a ten days, and took your personal time. When questioned about this, they just tried to ram it down your throat that their pandemic leave policy was "very generous."

Management,in some cases, don't even know how to do the job that you do, so they're overseeing you with no idea of what's going on. These managers will also set arbritary goals for your performance, yet give you no insight how to improve or better your performance. Still, however, they love to reprimand you if you don't hit their goals. Favoritism runs rampant at times, so expectations can be different between you and someone else.

The company culture can be great and it can be toxic. There are a lot of little cliques and people love to gossip about each other. At any given moment, I can stop what I'm doing and hear folks whispering about eachother. Grown adults can act as though they are back in high school. However, there are a lot of people who don't do this either, so there is SOME type of balance.

The benefits are good for what they are and there is some job security, which is nice. Also, many back office positions allow for a Monday through Friday schedule, which is nice, as it allows for regular weekends.

All in all, if you didn't want to read this entire review, I'll give you the short version. 

Enter with the expectation that the company views you as a number until you get a certain number of years in. Understand that your pay will be okay, but the place can be stressful. Accept that some people can cause a lot of drama. My recommendation? Keep your head down, focus on doing your job, and tune out everything else. You'll probably be alright. 

I worked there for 2 years. Lord forbid I ran into financial issues. Because of this, I was let go. 

While I was there, I started out in the contact center. It was alright to say the least but I could do without the micro-managing. Having 'meetings' about forgetting to aux in and out of phones on time was mind numbing and tedious. It wouldn't be until a year later that they found out I could work other positions in the same department. At that point, it was needed as my mental health from the place started to decline. Being off the phones for an hour or two helped me out a lot but if I got that opportunity was a whole different can of worms. Though some of the management was nice and good to work under, it was a mess with them not talking between themselves about "work needs". So much for communication skills needed. Something that also didn't help was the promise of work from home in that department specifically. When I first applied there, they said it would only take a few months but before I was let go, they still haven't gotten that far. That was one of the things I asked for as part of my disability and yet it never came to fruition even with changing departments that was supposed to be hybrid work from home. It wouldn't be until a year and 8 months that I would finally be able to move to a different department as well. If it weren't for the previous 2 year requirement policy, I probably would have quit a lot sooner. 

Regarding disability: Because of my disability, all my paid time off went out the door at the beginning of the year. Using your paid time first is garbage if you report your disability. So it meant if you were sick with anything else, you weren't getting paid. There were 4 weeks in total that I had to take off because of my disability but the company they work with didn't think it was necessary for short term disability. Meaning, I didn't get paid for 4 weeks of missing work and that put a lot of stress on me. 

Once I got into the other department, it felt like I was feeling a lot better about it all. I wasn't in a high call volume department that put strain on my mental state, I was finally able to learn new things and specialize in something, and I loved my coworkers down there. I think my 2 years of working there, the coworkers I met were the only things keeping me sane. I can't but if I could go back, it would just be for them. 

The San Jose division is literally the step unwanted child of the organization. Technologies absolutely horrible, the facilities are filled with mold, rats and people who we'll grab your lunch from the refrigerator and eat it. The turnaround is extremely high they consider 4 months being a "while". The company is extremely cheap, recently supplying utensils and coffee for employees. Management is terrible. They have so much time on their hands that they review cameras to time you. They also have that "that's why we're paying you" mentality and will have you work as much as they can work.The culture is very dry, very rare to find someone who's friendly and is actually excited to be at work. They recognize you by giving you a good job pin and a rock because "you rock". They have a 3 page dress code policy. Pay and benefits are okay, most other credit unions offer better. Holidays are less days than other credit unions and you also have to use your PTO on Christmas Eve when they close early and work the entire day on Black Friday and New year's Eve.

Back to back calls with no balance. 
The supervisors can be very rude, they are always “understaffed” but the reality is they aren’t doing enough to hire, instead they put as much pressure on their high value workers as they can to pick up the slack. If you come in early they won’t give a choice they’ll tell you to jump on the phone even if you came just to get set up. Don’t expect to leave on time if you are swing because you need to stay till the Q is clear. The supervisors can be highly inappropriate with the way they handle feedback and passive aggressive remarks. If you utilize your PTO in a way they don’t like they’ll pull you in for a meeting to guilt trip you for leaving even though they can’t write you up. Movement? Sure. Except if they are very busy they’ll delay your move as much as possible and not allow you to fully transfer duties until it’s convienent for them. The pay is decent but the mental pressure will destroy an average persons confidence and mental health condition. I don’t recommend this place. 

A typical day in this job includes taking 110 plus phone calls from customers(members), solving wide variety of problems. Some co-workers in other departments are helpful when needed, others are not helpful or have a bad attitude. Some managers can be very condescending and can treat employees like children for no reason. Management is always trying to add responsibilites to an already overloaded job and they brag that "if you can handle this job, you can handle anything!" Nobody at cefcu will transfer into this department - which is contact center.

I was excited to work for CEFCU; I wanted to be part of a "family" again. So far, I feel management does not want me there and is pulling me into the office every other day. If you like having a break in the morning and afternoon, this job is not for you. You get a 30 min lunch break; if you get any breaks, it's ten minutes max. They keep track of your time down to the minute. Suppose you clock in 1 minute late. You are considered tardy. If you don't have time to go to the bathroom during your break and go afterward, you will get pulled into the office. I am contemplating leaving or staying right now. I will update my review once I figure things out. I hope things work out for me with CEFCU. Moving to a different position would be nice, but you must stay where you're at for two years. You can't even go to a different location in the same position. 

There is better chance for advancement if you know who to talk to and fit the box of the work culture. 
Never worked somewhere that required me to bring up the process for advancement that we already started with no real response as to why the process was never finished.
Otherwise, good company. Great benefits and pay is ok but needs improvement. However, job security is great. During COVID they had transitioned some employees to work from home. Those still in the office follow COVID guidelines. They have not laid off employees but encourage more people to join the CEFCU team.


Will hold your mistakes against you during your career. Process for new procedures and upgrades goes really slowly. Moved around like a chess piece by upper management. Not transparent about the position selection process. Over half of employees looked stressed or unhappy. Fun community activities. Pay isn’t competitive and doesn’t keep up with inflation. Employees don’t feel appreciated. High turnover lately, training new employees constantly can be frustrating. Brown nosing will get you far in this company. Don’t speak up or share your ideas. Just agree and you’ll do great!

A typical day would consist of answering phones, half the time you need a higher up to do something for you in a different system, but good luck finding anyone to help you.  Phone wait times were very long, people would be very angry if you couldn’t immediately solve the problem, and there wasn’t a day that there wasn’t some new problem that a manager was needed for but not available.  You get 30 min for lunch and zero breaks.  If you go to the bathroom during your shift, be prepared to get snarky feedback.  The job is way underpaid.  Worst job I have ever had.

Overall, it feels like there's too much in this role at times. They don't train nearly enough to succeed in this role, which makes me have to ask for help on the majority of my interactions with members. They don't empower tellers to assist members beyond running transactions which has created a culture where members are always sat down with reps for literally anything.

They hire the bare minimum staff which creates a lot of days of being understaffed and leads to stress. There is rarely any opportunity to growth within the company. Not paid enough for all I have to do.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Customer service representative 7 salaries reported	$22.18 per hour
Personal banker 2 salaries reported	$26.54 per hour
Teller 1 salary reported	$19.22 per hour
Mortgage loan originator 4 salaries reported	$28.73 per hour
Loan processor 2 salaries reported	$26.28 per hour

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