Vantaggi
Great work environment. Excellent office, management is superb. They really make you want to drink the kool-aid and it sounds perfect on paper. Also, provides you with the licenses you need to go do something else. Really excellent leadership and if you succeed its a path to early retirement. Some high-level producers make upwards of over a million per year and don't work nearly as much as other people making the same. It really does show promise as a career and those who make it do really well in it. If you don't have a job out of college and you're out of options this is a great place to start. Especially if you want a series 7 license.
Svantaggi
Here we go, I'm going to summarize the cons without sounding nit picky. First off, it's all commission (not out of the ordinary in this industry) therefore it costs literally nothing for them to hire you. They pay you a $1500 stipend and then the rest is up to you. They'll say to you that you can market yourself in "anyway you want" but in the end it's a smile and dial business. You'll be dialing till your fingers come off even tho they say you can use other forms of marketing. They stress "always be closing" like there's no tomorrow so you'll be as pushy as possible to the people you talk to on the phone. They brag they're better than Morgan Stanley or Wells Fargo when those companies actually have structure for their new employees. They say "you can work whenever you want" but yell at you if you try to leave before 8pm. Yes the hours are 8-8 and they expect you to work saturdays too. Most managers will make you go on the phones in the first day or two of you starting, meaning you're selling products you really have no clue about. The ethics of the business are also questionable. Because your only goal is to set the meeting you need to do it by any means necessary and I am not going to lie it was pretty fun getting someone to commit to something when you know they don't want/need the product although if you feel uncomfortable misleading people this isn't the right career choice for you. Don't let the name "Financial Advisor" fool you, that position really means "insurance salesman". And if you thought cold calling was a bad business practice theres a practice they use called blind dialing where you take a companies phone number and copy it into an excel file and dial numbers from there. These are only some of the experiences I had, but really it's different for everyone.