Pros
Brand name - when you say Morgan Stanley everyone knows what you do. Generous training salary All expenses (license, education, training) paid by the firm Professional education and growth is encouraged. $5000/year for tuition and a $10,000 bonus for completing CFP designation within first 4 years. Your first 4-5 months are spent solely on studying for the series exams. Paid salary for 6 months of pre-production training and 24 months once production begins. Salary tapers off by 1/6th per month from months 18 through 24. Production goals are reasonable (at least they would be if leads were provided). Fairly easy to get hired considering some of the people I met in Warren.
Cons
Training comes out of a box and you are completely on your own. This is not something hard work alone can overcome, everyone that I know that made it did some by coming onto a team or being placed directly with a senior FA who mentored them years ago. The business is complicated and can not be learned from reading alone. Training for the series 7 and 66 is outsourced to a company called STC. They do a good job of preparing you for the test but I recommend buying "Pass the 66" by Robert Walker to supplement your series 66 training. The STC training is lacking on the 66 portion. You get 1 shot at the 7 and 2 tries at the 66. Failure to pass means termination. Product training is near non-existent and knowledge primarily comes from the whole sellers. The only live training comes from a week long crash course held in Warren, NJ where you have 4-5 NDOs (national development officers - trainers) and a class of up to 100 other FAAs. Training is held in a single large room with a ton of information being covered in only 5 days. After this you will never hear from your NDOs again because they're already onto the next giant class. No leads are provided to trainees, not even a scrubbed cold call list. If you want leads, you have to buy them. No guidance for where to buy the leads from either. The firm's "leads" system does not work, every time I tried it all I got was "0 leads returned". Upon completing all pre-production requirements (series exams, training modules, Warren) you are given your FA production number and enter into production. A short clock starts ticking. I have never felt so unprepared as I did returning from Warren. Time given varies from 4 months to 9 months before getting cut for not meeting goals. Before I was hired I was promised both leads and a mentor. Shortly after I started my manager left and neither the leads or the mentor materialized. The business model is to hire mass trainees. 15-20% will make it and near 100% of those who make it had a team. The trainee FAs will prospect and bring in some assets and family money. When they are cut the assets are divided among the senior FAs. On that note, senior/high producing FAs are given anything they want. Trainees are largely ignored. 1 branch manager and a handful of support staff is not enough for 50 plus FAs and multiple offices.