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Prudential

What is the best part of working at the company?
The way they treat their employees. Thier sales teams is awarded year after year for its culture, growth, and ability to create lasting customers.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Excessive workloads. Few opportunities for growth or advancement. Work that isn't engaging or challenging. Lack of social support.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The six elements of great company culture
1. Community
At Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For®, employees express a sense of winning together when times are good—and sticking together when times are tough.

Top features separating the Best Workplaces from other organizations include:

Celebrating special events
Sharing profits
Treating layoffs as a last resort
The importance of unity extends to giving back to the community, which we see at Cisco, Salesforce and many other Great Place To Work-Certified™ companies. Unity and community also create conditions for better employee cooperation.

2. Fairness
Humans place a high value on fairness. Companies where employees feel like everyone is getting a fair opportunity consistently report more positive employee experiences.

Fairness is an area that great workplaces excel at, as our workplace study revealed. When rating equal compensation and recognition, employees score these companies 37-42 percentage points higher than the national average.

Employees at these companies also report issues with favoritism and politicking far less often. On employee surveys, these companies score 38 percentage points higher when asking their people about these experiences.

Surprisingly, fair pay isn’t the factor that most impacts employees’ overall workplace satisfaction and intent to stay. Other, less tangible aspects of the workplace, such as pride and strong leadership, play a much larger role.

Employees say that being paid fairly for their work makes them twice as likely to think their workplace is great. But when employees are proud of their work, they are 20 times more likely to say it’s a great workplace.

3. Trustworthy management
Employees at great workplaces find their people managers and leaders to be more trustworthy: According to our research, 83% of employees at the 100 Best Companies said management’s actions match its words, versus 42% of employees at the average workplace.

Trustworthy, credible and personable managers have a significant positive impact on:

Employee retention
Overall workplace satisfaction
Employees’ willingness to recommend their company
Motivation to give extra effort at work.
When employees say managers are honest and ethical, they’re 5 times more likely to want to work there for a long time, and 11 times more likely to think the workplace is great.

4. Innovation
When managers create a safe environment to express ideas and make suggestions, employees are 31 times (!) more likely to think their workplace is a breeding ground for innovation. Workplaces that have innovative cultures inspire employee loyalty, confidence and willingness to give extra. 

Employees at innovative companies are 4 times more likely to say they’re proud to tell others they work there, 9 times more likely to think their company is a great place to work, and 4 times more likely to give extra to get the job done.

5. Trust 
We all know this: show people that you consider them trustworthy, and they'll generally prove you right.

Many of the 100 Best Companies trust their employees to work flexible hours and from remote places. This flexibility makes employees more dedicated and engaged because they feel trusted to meet their business goals in a way that works for their life.

Many companies today even offer unlimited paid vacation and let employees work from anywhere; strong employee relationships prevent people from abusing the policy.

6. Caring
Every company says it values employees. The 100 Best Companies don't say it; they show it. 

This year, for example, we saw exceptional support for employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pru went beyond physical safety to ease employees’ minds during the pandemic. For example, the company sent motivational messages to employees through their package scanning devices. It also offered virtual yoga classes and facilitated meditation sessions.

We also see parental leave practices improving, and milk shipping benefits are becoming more common.

By thoughtfully investing time and effort into these six areas, you can show your people that you care about them, improve employee experience, and put your company on a path to creating a great company culture.



What is a typical day like for you at the company?
An example of how to best answer this question for experienced candidates:
"I have key responsibility for maintaining several core products, two of which I was personally involved in developing. So usually the first part of my day is taken to make sure these products are running correctly and applying any necessary fixes, if needed. Yet the greater part of my day is taken with our recently launched new product development for the accounting department. Here are some of the details about that new product…"

An example of how to best answer this question for entry level candidates:
"In my recent internship, I had a core project that was my key deliverable for the summer. So my work day was structured around completion of that deliverable. So I’ll cover first an example of a work day early in the project and then I’ll also give you another example of a work day as we I got closer to completion of the project…"

•	Around 7 (Seven) years of IT experience as a Software Application Developer in Java Applications, Distributed Applications, Internet/Intranet based Database Applications and also developing, testing and implementing of application Environment using Java and J2ee technologies.
•	Experienced in all phases of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)–Requirement analysis, Specification, Implementation, testing, Documentation and Process management Agile Methodology.
•	Experienced in developing web based, internet/intranet and client/server, distributed architecture applications using Java and J2EE technologies.
•	Extensive knowledge and hands on experience with J2EE Technologies and in developing web applications using JAVA, JDBC, Servlets, JSP, EJB, MDB, J2EE, Struts, Eclipse IDE and Web Sphere, Web logic, Apache Tomcat Application Servers.
•	Experience with web and xml technologies like HTML, DHTML, JSP Custom Tags, JavaScript, XML, XML Schema and SAX, DOM, JAXP parsers and Spring Framework.
•	Extensive experience in GUI design and development, particularly using HTML and JavaScript.
•	Proficient in Oracle, SQL Server Databases on Windows and UNIX Environment. Extensive knowledge with, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, Stored Procedures, Triggers and Developer tools. 
•	Experience in writing queries and stored procedures using Oracle, Microsoft SQL and PL/SQL.
•	Experienced in programming, deploying J2EE on BEA Web Logic, IBM websphere, Tomcat.
•	Used various components of Spring like Controller Classes, Dispatcher Servlet, Handler classes, Bean classes, Validation Framework, etc.
•	Extensive knowledge in developing and deploying the applications
•	Strong experience in analysis and design using MVC based frameworks like Jakarta-Struts using J2EE. 
•	Hands on experience in Messaging Middleware using JMS (P2P, Pub/Sub).
•	Expertise in implementing J2EE application design patterns like MVC (Model-View-Controller), DAO (Data Access Objects), Service Locator, Business Delegate and Singleton patterns.
•	Extensive knowledge and hands on working experience in configuring, deploying Web services using SOAP, UDDI and WSDL.
•	Knowledge and hands on work experience with Hibernate
•	Expertise in writing ANT scripts and Installing and Configuring for automatic scheduling of build jobs and publishing the results on mail servers.
•	Exposure in creating Use Cases, Class, Sequence and activity Diagrams using Rational Rose.
•	Expertise in developing test cases for Unit testing using JUnit.
•	Hands on experience with Installation, Configuration of Various Versioning Systems like CVS, WinCVS, Harvest with IBM RAD and Subversion with Eclipse IDE.
•	Extensive experience in designing and architecture of J2EE based complex applications.
•	Experienced in IDE Tools JDeveloper, Eclipse, BEA Workshop, NetBeans and Edit Plus. 
•	A self-motivated professional and natural communicator possessing good technical, initiating, leadership and problem-solving skills and has proven to be a good team player.

In my humble opinion this was a giant waste of everyone’s time. Poor training and a farce for anyone who thinks they are future Financial Advisors in the making. For those who are successful congrats! You are life insurance jockeys with a below average mutual fund platform to hang your hat on. In fairness, this appears to be reflective of commission based insurance jobs in general where prospective employees are lied to routinely. There was no real training and the only thing being sold with any consistency appeared to be life insurance policies. If you can make it at a firm like this, my advice would be to leave while you can and head for a real diversified financial services firm with a presence in the community. 
In closing I was “elated” to find out months into the job that this firm had developed a putrid reputation due to the fact that they had abandoned clients throughout the Southeast region during the 1980’s. Calling up clients with $10,000- $50,000 life insurance policies 30 years after the fact made for a scene from office space. On the rare occasion the client was even alive, their responses were far from encouraging. 
As for the greatest thing I had ever encountered at this job or any other in my lifetime, it had to be without a doubt- the live seminars. Paying a few hundred bucks out of pocket for the honor of hosting such live seminars was a tremendous concept, except for the actual execution part which often times involved inviting people in the wrong cities and even wrong states, to a “Free potato bar” appetizer “teach in”event at some half assed hotel chain. This was rich. People with absolutely no money and/or interest in what we had to pitch would routinely bring extended family members along for these “free potato bar extravaganzas” and upon completion of the meal would stand up, grunt and walk out once they realized they could not procure any more free food. During these events I became accustomed with the phrase “smart casual” as a metaphor for attendees who could be seen wearing sweatpants and sneakers.  This was enough to make me laugh, cry, and want to end my life all at once! At one point I had the honor of making the aforementioned “swank” attendees sign an attendance sheet where they would provide Pru an address and phone number for a follow up call. As god as my witness, these people would use some of the best faux aliases with toll free 800 numbers or foreign area codes. I get a huge smile thinking about these morons as I type this. This is enough to make me reconsider the harsh review. I strongly suggest any college student experience this as an internship so they can then then cross it off as a potential career option!

I went into a the role with a different idea of what it would be.It is essentially a call center even though they call it a contact center. This means all the rules and ways of working that a call center has are true here. They required us to have certain security industry licenses in order to work. They did pay for the training and fees in order to get them. If you obtained them on the first try you would get a bonus. You would also get a bonus just for passing them regardless when and a pay raise. After that you are left with the reality that what you do is a call center role. High volume inbound calls, with no many support tools. Trainning was okay but stressful they constantly told you to "use your resources" when asking your trainers for help. This made it very stressful as you already had a clients waiting for an agent to only wait more as we looked for the answers to their questions. I think this might have been avoided with the trainers simply answering our questions so we can learn instead of making us dive into a library of information to find it. Prudential handles lots of plans for various employers and no two plans are alike so its very stressful . Their is a lot of details to learn and you must be able to quickly seach for the answers you need while the client is on the line with you. The structure is very corporate as well if you have a questions about certain things or there is something you want to do. You need to talk to the correct people and follow the company structure. There is a big focus on metrics and getting people in and out as quickly and efficiently as possible. Many of the clients that call are somewhat rude and entitled since Prudential holds their retirement money. The schedule is very good for a call center. You work Monday-Friday a shift somewhere between 8am to 9pm depending on your timezone. You will also have mayor holidays off. Benefits were really good and you got them from day one, PTO , sick time , medical , retirement all the works. When it comes to call centers this has to be one of the top ones. Everyone is very professional and corporate as you would expect from a fortune 100 company. I think this adds to making it one of the better options when it comes to call centers. Still , it's a call center anothing different from that so high volume calls, rude customers and stress are part of the day to day. I would only recommend this to people who are okay with the call center workstyle and all that comes with it.

Prudential resembles many financial services companies in that compensation for representatives is based solely on commission. Reps often feel pressure to compromise ethics to feed themselves. Morale is very low. Training is superficial. Turnover is high. Prudential does not mind seeing reps come and go. That seems to be part of their model. Nepotism was high. The managing director of the agency promoted her kin over higher producing reps. The NYC-area agency where I worked lost two of their highest performing, seasoned reps while I was there. They left because they felt undervalued and because compensation is higher elsewhere. They did not leave because of inability to compete. They were successful. Working for Prudential in other capacities might be significantly different but working there as a financial adviser was a thoroughly negative experience. Some of these features are industry-wide but they are especially pronounced at Prudential. There are some nice and very knowledgeable people there of course. The wholesalers are very competent. I would not recommend working at Prudential. If you are resolved to work as a producer in financial services and/or insurance you can do much better. 

Prudential could improve by giving reps a base salary. This would remove the conflicts of interest that incentivize unethical behavior (e.g. selling less-than-suitable products to clients to increase commissions). This would also significantly improve morale, which is low even among veteran reps. 

They could invest more time in meaningful professional development (not just online tutorials). 

They could open centrally-located offices with windows (my office didn't have any and it was in a remote part of the city). 

They could foster partnerships between reps and area business instead of leaving this entirely to producers. 

No one is asking Prudential to coddle their employees. Empowering them to succeed and creating a supportive collegial atmosphere is not asking too much and it seems to work very well for Silicon Valley. 

The trouble is that Prudential doesn't see it as in their interest to improve retention and develop a loyal cadre of advisers. This is inept and makes the experience of working their unsatisfactory. Hence my low marks.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Things that Ensure Your Company Is a Great Place to Work
#1 Education Reimbursement. ...
#2 Opportunities to Learn. ...
#3 Stock Options & 401Ks. ...
#4 Physical & Mental Health. ...
#5 Paid Time Off. ...
#6 Maternal & Paternal Leave. ...
#7 Office Pets. ...
#8 Individualized & Safe Work Environment.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
What is the most stressful thing at work for you?
Some of the factors that commonly cause work-related stress include:
Long hours.
Heavy workload.
Changes within the organisation.
Tight deadlines.
Changes to duties.
Job insecurity.
Lack of autonomy.
Boring work.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The work culture definition is the attitudes and behaviors of employees within an organization A positive work culture doesn't just happen

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
n a typical day in my last position, I fulfilled management tasks of opening and closing the facility, as well as overseeing a staff of seven individuals.
Also“I usually start my work at 7:30 am, collaboratively plan my day, and make sure that the most urgent work gets done first“.My typical day starts as I get up early and try to get to work at least 25 minutes before the ‘start time’. In this way, I can avoid any delays due to traffic jams and can still be on time for work. Then, I sit down and plan the day. I jot down what all plans I have to complete and prioritize them depending on their urgency and importance. I check my voice mails and emails and the calendar and try to make plans such as organizing meetings and such. This way I can increase my pace for doing work and can be more productive for the day. “

On a typical Monday morning, I usually begin by going over the list from the previous week. This way I can set up my priorities. I review the status of the projects that I’m currently working on and I try to finish any pending work if present. I try to make sure that all the work assigned to me is moving forward and without any glitches. “

During a typical day at the office, I am responsible for overseeing and coordinating my team’s progress on the various projects that are assigned to my team. I keep in touch with our benefactors and keep them updated about the progress of the projects and make sure they are happy with the performance and the statistics. “

This helps the employer interpreting that you are successfully completing the job.

•	Worked with Project Management to scope the testing effort and provided status and estimates.
•	Developed detailed test plans and test cases, Entrance and Exit criteria for the application being tested and ensured that standards for documentation were followed.
•	Created and maintained the Tractability Matrix and Test Matrix. 
•	Involved in Configuration Testing of the application across different platforms. Worked in Microsoft SharePoint to get detail requirements, plans and minutes. 
•	Reviewed Performance optimization of the stored procedures written by team members
•	Developed test plan for testing the application after analyzing system specification document
•	Tested and validated the database tables using SQL and PL/SQL.
•	 Used SQL queries and PL/SQL blocks to perform the Backend testing 
•	 Involved in developing Test plans and Test cases.
•	Executed Test cases and Performed back end testing to test the database and
•	Database integrity testing by executing SQL statements
•	Troubleshoot new releases and production issues. Interacted on a regular basis with web developers and business analysts on any Change of Requirements.
•	Performed Manual Testing on different modules of the application.
•	Followed the Agile Methodology to emphasize on real time communication over written Documentation. 
•	Used Agile Methodology to minimize risk by implementing software development in short time boxes or iterations.
•	Executed Sanity Testing to determine whether software is performing well enough to accept it for testing effort & Smoke Testing to determine possibility of further testing manually.
•	Manually conducted Positive Testing by putting correct inputs to ensure that it functions as desired and Negative Testing by putting incorrect inputs to ensure that it fails gracefully.
•	Used Quality Center for Tracking Defects and Reporting Bugs.
•	Defined Test Steps for each test in the Tree. Also, created Automated and Manual Tests in Quality Center.
•	Scheduled a test using Test Run Schedule in Quality Center.
•	Experience conducting User Acceptance Testing and training of end users.
•	Conducted Result Analysis and interacted with developers to resolve issues related to bugs.
•	Participated in the Project Meetings and Walkthroughs in pursuit of Information Sharing as well as resolving the intermittent issues of concern.

Prudential has been trying for years to break out of the life insurance sales stigma; however, as hard as they try promoting investments to agents to sell, there is virtually no visibility in the investment market place.  

Customers perceive agents as life insurance sales people or mobile customer service agents, nothing more.  The company charges for leads generated by the internet or media advertising, which very seldom are available.  Other "free" leads come from existing orphaned clients that the majority tend to be 80+ years old or if they are younger most have no assets to invest thereby pose a compliance conundrum of creating a sales opportunity that causes us agents to be perceived as customer service agents on the road.  

Work at the office is awkward at best.  Those that are in the office are questioned- why don't you have any appointments? Agents not at the office on the road are spinning their wheels with unproductive leads, racking up senseless miles on personal cars are often looking for better jobs.  

Could be a great place to build a P&C business, but that takes years to develop or hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy out someone's book of business and there is no support from management to develop it. 

Very odd arrangement:  Agents have to pay the office to rent a space in the office - cubicle or actual office with walls, plus pay technology fees that include the use of the printer - copier and phone. Fees average $1200 per month.

Manager assistance is more for compliance sake than how can we help you increase sales.  DOL regs have put this company on full alert tailspin.  Basically plan to spend 80% of your work day filling out paperwork, compliance CYA docs and internal training videos, internal training modules and with DOL changes, constant updates to compliance and application procedures. Most frustrating is the endless training on life insurance training and nearly non existent training on fee based portfolio management. The little bit of the rest of your day, try to represent yourself as a fiduciary for a company that mostly wants to be in life insurance sales - not investments.

A Typical Day at Work: Having a structured approach to prioritization is essential in a fast-paced environment. Proactive planning (reviewing open items, prioritizing, and checking your calendar for meetings), and reactive problem-solving of ad hoc items. The discipline to reply to emails by order of importance ensuring that critical issues are addressed without getting lost in a sea of correspondence.

What I Learned: Insight into people management - understanding that employees have different needs and learning how to adapt my approach to support their growth. The realization that business decisions often supersede individual contributions was disheartening, but I recognized that "it’s business, not personal" which allowed for a more pragmatic approach to career navigation.

Management:  People in leadership roles come from different backgrounds and may have different priorities. Assuming alignment without communication can lead to frustration. The idea that some managers are in stretch roles themselves is a reminder that leadership isn’t always about expertise but also about learning and growing within the organization.

Workplace Culture: Adaptability is critical. Organizational culture shifts based on leadership changes, external market forces, and internal dynamics. Those who can evolve with it will thrive, while those who resist it may struggle.

Hardest Part of the Job: Seeking clear communication from leadership can be a common frustration. It can create uncertainty and makes it difficult to execute strategies effectively. Without a strong top-down vision, middle management can struggle to provide direction to their teams, leading to misalignment and inefficiencies.

Most Enjoyable Part of the Job: Seeing the field succeed because of the tools and materials developed by my team was the most rewarding aspect. It reinforced the impact of our work and highlighted the value of equipping professionals with the right resources to elevate, grow and scale their businesses.

Typical call center, very rigid. They tell you the call center rep job is a stepping stone to a great new career. Not so. Turnover is high, and very few are able to get out of the call center into other departments. Most quit or get fired before 2 yrs. The workday consists of logging into the phones & taking calls all day, which seems straightforward enough, except they expect perfection from you at all times, but the tools you are given to do the job are horrible. Your day is scheduled to the minute. Forget the skills/talent you had in a former life cuz now you are only as good as your stats. As a call center rep, you are just a number & easily replaced. You're also the one to get thrown under the bus for any mistakes whether you made them or not. It's easier for everyone in any department to blame "those morons" in the call center. You are the scapegoat. Don't bother to explain or defend yourself, you are always wrong. Even if something is clearly an issue with one of the multiple flawed systems you have to use, or something is just not clear enough to allow you to make educated decisions, you are WRONG. Period. The company claims they are one of the best for work life balance. This could be true, just not for the call center. Scheduling time off must be done weeks in advance, and you may not get the day you need anyway. Doctor appt or medical need for time off? Doesn't matter. Something unexpected comes up and you think you can arrange a shift change or adjust your hours? Not gonna happen. What if your kid gets sick? Sorry bout your luck. 4 unscheduled absences in a 12 month period puts you in the just about next to fired category. 
Sad thing is that it could have the potential to be a decent job, but there's no effort by management to develop or mentor you. They hire people who are skilled, & competent for this position but fail to treat them as such.
Bottom line, if you need a job & benefits take it but don't expect a fulfilling or lengthy career.

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