commercial real estate agent

housing officer

relationship banker

commercial underwriting manager

branch manager

Santander

A typical day was like any other call center with inbound/outbound calls all throughout the day, nothing out of the ordinary there. What made it terrible for me was management. Some (most) of the managers were promoted to that position based on tenure, not ability. If you were "next in line" you became a manager rather you were qualified to do the job or not and most of the manager were definitely NOT qualified. You could tell the good ones from the bad ones too. The good ones were the ones always up and moving around on the floor because they were actually helping people while the bad ones sat their desks all day because they were unapproachable unless you were on their team. If you're looking for an all inclusive work/team environment, the whole "one team, one dream" this is definitely not the place as each manager is their own little company inside the company. 

Rules change at the drop of a dime and absolute no's become maybes and are based on who your manager is. So now you have some managers saying yes to something that other managers are still saying no to. Problem with that is that our calls are not filtered based on who your manager is especially during high call volumes, weekends or if you get pulled to help out another team. So now, if a person happens to call more than once, and depending on who they talk to, they're more than likely to get two different answers to the same question causing anger and confusion from that customer. Not good customer service if you ask me. 

You are expected to be at your desk for very long periods of time and yes, I get it, it's a call center but it's a multi billion dollar call center so how about get some desks that adjust up and down? Every moment we're away from our desk is clocked down to the second and they will micro manage your time and send you a "coaching" if you go over, even a minute of one of your 2 15 min. breaks, 7 mins. personal time or 1 hour lunch, that is cut down to 30 mins, at a moments notice, when it gets busy. So understand, when OT is called, at a moments notice I might add, and lunch is cut to 30 mins, you have about one hour, 7 mins. worth or breaks for a 10 hour work day. Go over any of those minutes and you are "coached". You are expected to take and make back to back calls while sitting for hours at a desk that you can't even raise so that you can at least stand up and get your blood circulating. 


FYI Santander.... the energy level is increased when people are able to stand up and move around. Keeping employees in a seated position, tethered to a phone all day, decreases energy. The decreased energy makes people feel tired and work slower and be less productive. You'd think a multi billion dollar company would know that. Get some adjustable desk for crying out loud. We shouldn't need a doctor's note for this. This is common sense in the workplace in this day and age. 


FYI Santander... your managers are terrible, with the exception of a few, so how about get rid of the "next in line" promotion technique that leaves the employees with unqualified, unapproachable managers promote qualified people to do the job the right way.

I have to say that there wasn't much I enjoyed when I worked for Santander Consumer USA. The culture of the company, management and the nick picky micro managing even made the nice paychecks, (earned through grueling OT) not even enough of an incentive for me to stay. When it got to a point where even the thought of going to work made me sick to my stomach, I knew it was time to hang it up and I submitted my notice to quit. Oh and there is a high turn over rate at Santander... I wonder why?....

I will say that I was blessed with a great manager, assistant manager and team and for that I'm thankful. There are some pretty cool people who work for this company and I made some friends that I actually hung out with outside of work and even still to this day although I don't work there anymore. And I won't tell anybody not to work there, your experience might be different than mine. I'm only speaking of my experience. I know my background and the call center I worked in before Santander,( that I had to leave because I was relocating otherwise I'd still be there). The call center I worked in before Santander set a very high standard of work ethic, a high standard for management and a thriving culture that Santander just couldn't measure up to for me. I remember telling that other company, when I was leaving, that they have probably made it impossible for me to work anywhere else and so far, it's been 2 for 2 that I was right. I hope that changes soon.

This the worst company I have worked for ever, If you value your sanity do not apply at Sovereign. Recruiter and Interviewer will feed you a line and the job will be nothing like you are told. Absolutely unrealistic work load and then micro managed to every minute of your day. Your priorities will be 3-4 conference calls a day. If you are perhaps helping a customer and cannot be on a call management will call a co-worker and flip out and insist that you get on the call, customer or not! Next is calling to solicit, your calls will be traced to see how many you make. Then comes setting appointments for interrogating customers to find out where they have other accounts, mtgs, investments etc. You must sell them something, if not you must hound them for the name and number of a referral to call so you can solicit them for an account. Then you need to be out of the office and soliciting non-customers several times a week. Finally the IT system is so 1980's that throught out your day you will constantly need to fill in spreadsheets to report your sales. Not anywhere in their priorities are servicing the customer. They will not tell you the large scope of "technical issues" they have since transferring to Santander's platform. It is a customer service nightmare. During all that you are expected to do there will be a line 2-3 deep of customers waiting to speak to you about erroneous fees, interest payments not being sent, statements not being sent, bills received 2 days after due date, you will deal with extremely angry customers all day. To combat this you will be inundated with emails on managements expectations of customer retention along with a memo about fees going up and what to do to save the customer! I get at a minimum 2 customers a day who either call or come in to complain that they receive 4-5 solicitation phone calls a DAY trying to sell them something. I have had customers tell me that the call center solicitor has even argued with them on the phone about not applying for a credit card. And when a customer has a problem you can call and email that department until you are blue in the face, you will not get any help. I have had customers who have had double mortgage payments come out of their checking accounts overdrawing them and then they were sent to collections, I could not get a response from anyone other than it was a software issue and before they can fix it they first need to translate from Spanish to English and then see what the problem is and vise versa!
Average employment time at Sov is 18 months, revolving door, you will be thrown into covering other locations. You will find that in some cases they do not even have enough employees to open that day.
And through all of this if you don't make your sales you will be asked....How do you go to sleep at night? How can you look at yourself in the mirror and respect yourself knowing that you didn't give an honest days work, blah blah... Bottom line run run run far away, do not apply, do not become a customer and do not let anyone you care about do either.

I had been working for Santander for 4 and a half years. started as a district float teller, and had 3 major promotions since starting with the bank. Went from float teller to permanently placed teller role, then UB, and finally was promoted to Relationship Banker and the company sponsored me to achieve and complete my financial securities licenses. In late 2018, I had a devastating & tragic loss in my immediate family. and rightfully so, after that I was very much struggling with my mental health. of course, this affected my personal & professional life in various ways. the first time I was written up was 2 months after my personal loss, for “tardiness.” Which - in reality - was only a few days out of a couple months that I was 5-10 minutes late getting to the branch in the morning. After that, it was downhill from there. Toxic work environment. Horrible managers. That includes lead tellers in many branches. Don’t get me wrong - I have seen GREAT managers as well. But I was 100% set up. After the first write up, I started getting written up for everything and anything. I was even accused of sharing customer information, which was not true. One day, a co-worker of mine had asked how a loan application had gone with a particular person, and I gave my honest answer (not in front of ANY customers). That very same co-worker then went and told the branch manager that I had “shared customer information” - which led me to being placed on a final written warning. I missed out on my biggest incentive payout, two quarters in a row because of this incident. Again, only downhill from there. Somehow I lasted another 6-9 months after that - but finally, a customer put through a negative complaint about me, and the bank then used that as the excuse to terminate me for “performance issues” after being a loyal, dedicated, and honest employee of almost 5 years. I would never in my life recommend ANYONE to work here. I was so great at my job, and loved working with my customers and really helping people day to day with their finances. 

I am crushed. they claim to care about you as a person & an employee. do not believe these lies. it’s terrible. and I’ve seen these types of things happen to great employees over the years. it’s just absolutely terrible. I am now almost starting over, in a way. and to make matters worse, we are still in a global pandemic. 

Thanks Santander.....
Do not work here. Trust me. they will find any and every reason to get rid of you and leave you with nothing even if you devoted your life and your career to this bank, your team, and their clients. 

Oh and also - during my “exit interview,” I was sarcastically told “good luck” by a mean-spirited HR person who was always rude to me and had never actually met me in person before. 

Slap in the face. 

My typical day at work is working with different auctions that I have been assigned to and making sure that vehicles are ready to be sold at auction by having titles ready based on state requirements. I provide my team and vendors reports that can assist in getting titles ready in a timely manor.  Working with many different vendors to get titles flipped out of customer names and into our company name for the swift sale of vehicles at auctions.  Work on title problems that require contact with state DMV's to have them corrected. Each department is production oriented and customer based focused in a call center environment dealing with everything from collections, customer service, funding, title services and lease procurement. 

During my time at Santander I have learned about the life cycle of a loan, customer service techniques to provide one call resolutions, and collection techniques. I have learned about chat techniques to assist customers via our online chat program.  I have learned about state requirements and laws regarding the repossession of vehicles.  I have also been placed in a position to lead my team meetings, and be our morale booster.

Our management staff has been homegrown.  They have been with the company for many years and have been promoted from within to the positions that they are currently in.  The managers rarely leave their positions.

Our current culture is Simple, Personal, and Fair.  This has changed over the years that I have been with the company.  We are definitely a customer first company and drive to make sure they have the best experience regardless of the position we are in.  Each customer is treated in a simple, personal and fair manner.

The hardest part of my job is that I am constantly putting myself in positions to learn more, and grow within the company.  Not that putting in the work is difficult, unfortunately it is that there are not many options for growth if you have not been with the company for over 7+ years.  Your management staff constantly grooming you for new positions is wonderful, however those positions are typically given to employees that may have a lower skill set, but they do have the tenure.

The most enjoyable part of the job is the same as the above.  Your management staff will constantly allow you the opportunity to learn more.  If you are one, like myself who strives for more, they are more than willing to push and challenge you.

Run far far far away! No helping hand from the Market Pres, DE's or the ROM's of the Metro NYNJ. Complete craziness and to be honest with you it's like a day at the Races with Groucho, Harpo and Chico and I'll add Zeppo Marx for that Fantastic Director of Consumer Sales for Metro NYNJ. To many leaders and not a spec of reality in their little worlds.

The challenges here at Santander Bank are real people. As they say "It's easy to tell people how to do their job especially since you've never done it before" its that amazing.

Not long ago, I listened to a Regional Market President speak at a leadership rally last spring regarding an issue she was having with a DE and how hard it is for her and she stays up at night worrying about him & his family yadda, yadda, yadda All about her, we get it (worrying so much that she felt the need to speak about it in front of him and 200 others) Well lets be serious the DE was there with his team and gone from Santander shortly afterwards. (Yeah nothing happened here people) What do you think of the leadership skills of Santander Bank now? It doesn't stop there, many other situations that should have been dealt with real leadership and wasn't. It's all in how you treat someone that they perform at higher levels of expectations. 

What I find even more troubling is that the bank continues to hire more positions for State Street, Boston and they can't seem to pass a stress test from the Federal Reserve but lets hire more upper mgmt. How about hiring the right people for the job that the bank can pass the ST.  How about Santander stops cutting the branches back so they can do their jobs properly? How about you stop making up titles & jobs to hire more and more individuals so the branches can get the proper staffing to meet the needs of the customers. Do they really need to have so many tiers of leadership and the individual districts still can't pull it together as a region. 

It's really disappointing that a large organization such as Santander Bank can't seem to pull it together. To many mistakes and to much money spent on a system that has no way of preventing errors or fraud. Somewhere, somehow they lost touch. They want so much but don't want to give you a team to properly accomplish or meet expectations.

I'm on my way out of this place shortly, but do yourself a favor look before you leap. I'm not impressed with the Bank or the skills of their leadership team. luckily, I am just a spectator to all of this craziness. So if you are looking to advance your career definitely look at some of the smaller banks. Better opportunities for growth.

There's no room for advancement here and, unlike most other financial services firms, there are no performance-based incentives to help our Financial Consultants beyond our base salary.  Beyond that, this team is in its infancy, so growing pains are to be expected--but what's NOT expected is the amount of ineptitude and corruption of our manager and our manager's manager that's displayed on nearly a daily basis.  Our new "manager" was promoted from within our ranks by our now former manager not because of any ability or aptitude, but because she did nothing but complain that she had "nothing to do" (because the one Financial Consultant she was supposed to support doesn't trust her) and threatened to leave...FOR A YEAR...and nobody called her bluff.  Instead she was promoted over us and that's when the incessant micromanagement began.  Not only is it like the blind leading the blind here with rules that seem to change every week, but she's constantly late to our weekly conference calls, clearly disorganized/unprepared, and when our newest hire (who had more leadership skills than the two of them put together) challenged them on their make-it-up-as-they-go-along policies, some of which violate actual company policy as well as state labor law, they conspired with HR and fired him without so much as one formal/written warning because they knew they were wrong and had to cover it up to protect themselves.  Now all of us are terrified of their retaliatory behavior and have lost faith in them completely, so we're all looking for new jobs and will bail on them at the first opportunity.  You reap what you sow, ladies, and we can't wait to do to you what you've done to him.

Take an ethics class, for starters.  After that, take an actual course in management and interpersonal communications.  Then your management should take YOU to task and stop the ongoing cycle of promoting mediocrity.  If they would simply ask the Financial Consultants we/they support and the District Managers who the FCs report to, they'd come to find that you are both universally despised on both the banking and investment sides of the house as well as considered to be the cause of most of our problems instead of their solutions.

The bank is undergoing central bank audits that are not going well.    As a result, they will have to increase capital.    There has been a hiring freeze in credit for a year - meaning they don't actually plan to grow the total book.    However, the mandate to all groups going in to 2013 was to grow aggressively, and the lenders' loan goals were doubled.   The units with which I was associated exceeded their goals, and all the new loans were performing, with existing portfolio delinquencies being reduced dramatically.   However, with the coming increase in capital requirements, all that loan growth is now a negative.  Think about that- you are given goals, you exceed them, and then suddenly success becomes failure as far as the bank is concerned.   This is being blamed on anyone associated with the loan growth, rather than on the people who calculated the reserves or directed the staff in the field to grow the book.    Instead of saying "oops, we goofed by not reserving enough against still-NPL residential mortgages in Europe, and now we have to backtrack in the US," it's "why did you grow the book so fast in the US?" when the answer is "because that was what you directed."

The future reduction in lending will be spun as "being more conservative," but US past-dues were next to zero at year-end - it's a simple matter of not having the capital to lend, much in the way Spinal Tap's band manager explained "our appeal is becoming more selective."

I would not recommend this place to anyone.

The bank is also highly disorganized, and very penny-wise / pound-foolish.   For example, the loan documents are laser-pro and completed by very junior admin staff in Pennsylvania.   This results in lower budgeted costs but ends up costing more money in workarounds, serial doc exceptions, errors in UCC filings and in lenders and team leaders having to QC the docs multiple times.   

One positive is the environmental review department.   Though understaffed they are very thorough and deliver reviews in a reasonable amount of time.

Typical day:
5 minutes daily jump start
Employee coacing, Every Monday we had a sell meeting with all the employess and went over were we were stating towars reaching the goals and how much we need to make and surplus the quartelly branch goal.
Contact business customersto to set up  appointments to stop by their during during the week for accout review and perhaps sell additional products that would benefit them better.Lobby Ledership, we took turns between the personal bankers,had at the end of the day review with each platform person to go over what they acomplished for the day and how many apointments they had for the next day and  what was their plan as well for the next day. I was asked to be introduced all business customers that went to make deposits at the teller line or if they
were sitting with one of my platform person. I would like to sit with them to go ove their potfolio and if theydid not had time I would schedule an appointment to go to their busines.We also had abot 1 or 2 conference calls a day to report how as the day going and then a the end ofthe day.  

The most enjoable part of my job:  I loved people, I am a people person, it was so rewarding when they trusted me and I could it help them. I treated my job like was my own business!!! Wanted to suceed!! 

My co-workers:
 We all work together and got along well, we were almost like a family that we all wanted to help and we all wanted to suceed  and achieve the branch goals %100 ++

The hardest part of my job.....acually nothing important....maybe the widgets (the little $10 checking accounts - we had to have 3 aday) where I coul it be doing something more lucrative

What I learned:
Every company is different, I enjoyed workingthere for10 years with Sovereign, but then I decided to pursue my childhood dream of going  to medical school......and now I can see that it isn't for me and I do mis bancking!! and my customes!!

In my over 30 years of working as a professional in many different positions, I have never worked for a company that treated its customers and employees with such a high level of disrespect.  Instead of promoting a team environment, the company promotes more of a cutthroat one where everyone is protecting themselves.  Goals are a moving target and training is absolutely awful.  Since they are always changing your goals, and because they set unrealistic ones, it is very very difficult to meet your goals; and therefore, your commission payouts are reduced.  For instance, originally when I started my position, we had one call night.  Then they changed the goal to 20 cold calls a day and just recently, they changed the goal to 40 cold calls per day (which is almost impossible to achieve).  They have one set of written goals in your actual job description, and another set of more stringent goals that are not officially part of your job description.  It's the set of more stringent goals that is always changing. New employees are left alone to flounder and figure things out for themselves as the managers are usually unavailable to help, and the help line people regularly give wrong advice.  The branches are run with a skeleton staff and are constantly pulling from other branches to fill positions.  In the branch where I work, turnover rate is over 90% in one year!  In addition, the computer systems are outdated and extremely slow.  It is not unusual for your computer to lock up on you multiple times a day.  Instead of streamlining processes to reduce the time it takes to complete a sale or transaction, the company is always adding extra paperwork that is redundant. 

On a brighter note, the company does actually have some decent benefits and the pay is average.

Santander Consumer USA is the holding company of Chrysler Capital. Not associated with Chrysler Corp. They are just Doing Business As. The VP of Operations is a 30+ year old that has never been in a Management position. Came straight from the buyers desk into a position that requires; experience, skills in the competing market place, and Leadership experience. Of which he has none and still has not developed into today. He has deployed a buyer pitted against buyer bonus commission plan. Where you are ranked among the buyers on your team.You have to defeat them to get to the top position to get the biggest payout bonus. If you end up at the few spots from the bottom you will receive $0 bonus. I would not recommend this company. They are not employee centric. Employee 's are of no value to this company. You will feel exposed and limited in what you can do. They do not encourage entrepreneurship. If you come to them with ideas in the Round Table meetings, that are not inline with theirs. You will immediately become and outcast. Stay away from this company. There are many companies our there in the auto finance realm. That will provide a great work environment. This place is more like a sweat camp. In the last 3 months, more than 25 buyers have left the company. There are no promotion opportunities...as they only have slots they promote to. You have to wait for a slot to open, to be promoted. That tells you there is no value placed on a employee. There are no severance packages. They don't pay you accrued vacation time if you leave the company.I would avoid they company at all cost. On a scale of 1 to 10. This company ranks a -1. Stay away!

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Commercial real estate agent 3 salaries reported	$193,646 per year
Housing officer 264 salaries reported	$144,261 per year
Relationship banker 100 salaries reported	$49,269 per year
Commercial underwriting manager 27 salaries reported	$152,350 per year
Branch manager 62 salaries reported	$68,293 per year

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