FDM Group Reviews

FDM is a company who takes advantage of you by creating a system of modern day IT indentured servitude. -It's a two year contract where you are underpaid drastically. You will make about 32K after taxes. Most of these jobs are 80K+ a year positions and FDM only offers you 43k your first year. Do the math. Go to a recruiter instead. -The clients are not that great. Yes they are well known banks. BUT, you are not in Front Office. So the name doesn't matter. You are essentially a back office IT worker who will be taken advantage of. - They pay you for 8 hours of work a day but anyone who works in Finance knows that no one works 8 hours a day. Its between 9 to 12 hour days plus add in your commute from the suburbs because you will not be able to live in the City you are working in. -Account Managers do not know what they are doing. They do not email you back or have no interest in there jobs. Let's be honest they are placing people in IT jobs. How can anyone be passionate about that? -The training program isn't a real training program. I do not know who gives them these awards but they must be blind. You learn nothing and their trainers are mediocre at best. - The positive reviews here are not from Consultants, this is from management and marketing teams. FDM has to improve their image in order to recruit. There reputation online is terrible and terrible in general as well. They are now a public company so image matters, even if its all lies. -If you are a current Consultant and FDM responds to your reviews asking you to politely to email HR with your "suggestions" -> It's a trap. FDM conducts reviews while you are being "trained." which are not anonymous. One of the trainees in my class gave them a honest assessment, he was called to meet with his trainers who scolded him into submission. Essentially they grilled him on why he wasn't happy with them and kept the door open to dismissing him if he kept it up. ***Now here is the challenge for those of you read this, IF YOU THINK I AM NOT TRUTHFUL, go to LinkedIn, search for former FDM consultants, and ask them if this is the truth or not. MOST OF THEM WILL AGREE WITH THIS. The best way to find out is to research. So ask away. PRO TIP: Learn UNIX command line and Basic SQL online by yourself using tools such as YouTube, W3 schools, Code Academy, and other University sites. Put them on your resume and send to IT recruiters. Say you are looking for entry level positions in Application Support, Business Analysis, Development, and Project management. Most have positions available to them and will be happy to help you. Banks constantly look for young talent in tech. Cut out the middle man.

Pay, the way they split up your pay, you will constantly have to check them on their word, you won't be able to afford breaking your contract, did not get an offer from the company FDM placed me at following my FDM stint, lied about our contract length, they pay you less than they make off of you. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS JOB UNLESS IT IS YOUR LAST HOPE. I had read a bunch of Glassdoor reviews and the bad ones are pretty factual. I needed a job so I took the job but you should know you are basically a slave to the company for the next 27 months. For starters, they give you good training but it cost you so much more than it would anywhere else. We got about 2 months of training but they double charge you for it. 1) They say you can't leave the company unless you pay them $30K and you only make about $45 or $50K a year so it is impossible to leave if you want a place to live and food to eat. 2) You will get paid well below your colleagues once you are on site. I kid you not, I took a job doing the exact same thing with less work for a new company and instantly over doubled my salary. They made us come to NYC for training (which is actually pretty cool) but then they pay you as if you live with your mom down the street! For training you get a bonus that will not cover a place to stay while you are in NYC and you get minimum wage for your training time, which if you have ever been to NYC means you might be lucky to eat PB&Js the whole time you are there and spend less than you make. Anything you want to do while in NYC is not coming from the money you make from FDM. Once we finished training, and were on-site, you quickly realize that the people who do your exact job make twice as much as you, and I am not exaggerating about that. What the client company pays FDM for you to work for them is over twice your salary so FDM makes more off of you than you actually make. Multiple times we had to recheck our paychecks because multiple times they were not correct when we got them. They purposely split up your pay in many ways just to confuse you so be ready to do some math every time you get a paycheck just to make sure you are getting that super low amount they are required to pay you by their contract! You won't be paid for holidays and likely you will be forced to use all of your vacation days when you don't want to (but that is dependent on the client you end up working for as well as FDM). We were told our contract would be 2 years, but that only includes your time on site, your contract is actually 2-3 months of minimum wage for training, plus 2 more years on top of that. We were also told we would have a month of training once onsite and THEN our 2 year contract would start. So you are basically stuck with them for longer than you thought. We also had our contract end a month before we were told it was, which you would think would be a good thing but we found out a month before that when a team member tried to get vacation time from our client and the client told us we actually weren't employed on that date even though FDM told us we would be. So all of us had one less month to search for a job or start getting half of what we thought we would get paid because FDM flat out lied to us about our end date. All I will say is be prepared to constantly check this company at their word. It was a miserable 2 years full of surprises. They do offer some helpful things but they come at a VERY expensive cost to you the employee.