FDM Group reviews

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.

1) Account managers could be a little bit pushy with trying to get their positions filled. They are in fact salesmen and their two targets are clients for positions, and candidates who will fill them. This being said, as long as you are a level headed person and you do not believe every single thing the account managers say, you should be fine and deal with them just fine. They like to use their British accents and smiles to charm everyone. Just be aware, if you go on an interview and get the position at a client's site, it's pretty much set in stone unless you want to fight a war changing utility companies. 2) Everyone keeps talking about account managers in previews reviews so I can quote another experience that did not happen personally to me but I saw it unfold. A trainee wasn't approached by account managers for interviews so that person decided to reach out to account managers to possibly get some interviews with clients. Because the position was outside the tri-state area, this person declined to move forward with the interview stages. Apparently the account manager didn't like that and spoke to the academy manager about how said trainee is leaving a baste taste in their mouth by declining interviews. Said trainee only declined one interview which was outside his tri-state area contract. 3) There is a separation fee if you decide to leave within the first two years voluntarily for the training provided and services given while placing a candidate. You could be fined 30000 for leaving the company the first year and it becomes a 20000 fine the second year. 4) Pay structure is weird with having a basically salary and a daily bonus rate. If you take paid vacation, bank holidays or have been furloughed due to a decision on a bank, you will be penalized by missing out on half of your pay for those days. 5) If you get sent back to the academy and sit there too long without getting placed at a different site, the company will let you go since you are a cost to them. That would be fine but HR will tell you during assessment day that pretty much "everyone" will be on site for 2 years straight and that cases of people being let go are few and far between, I know of 4 so far. 6) Another point on skewed numbers. During the assessment day, HR will claim that most people end get getting hired internally after their 2 year commit. I myself asked if they kept any kind of statistics or metrics on this and they told me they did not. Now I'm not a rocket scientist, but if you tell me something and have no evidence to back it up, the credibility of that statement is just about void.