1. Account managers are truly clueless when it comes to industry knowledge and the roles they place consultants at. They also don't bother placing consultants to roles that actually match their skillset; placing consultants asap to any role available is the only thing they care about.
2. The "training" provided is full of pompous nonsense and completely unrelated to skills that are actually needed to succeed in the industry (e.g. spent more time learning about the "perfect handshake" than enhancing my VBA skills). It is outrageous that consultants were tied to a 2-year period of time in order to compensate for the cost of it (which was valued by FDM at £20k!).
3. Expect to receive no support after being placed, dealing with them for any sort of issues (e.g. payroll) is a pain and mistakes on their side are very frequent.
4. While it is indeed true that consultants are usually placed at big firms, the roles are almost entirely IT support, back office or compliance/KYC related - while there is nothing wrong with working in such functions of course, it is misleading that the company also advertises a Risk, Compliance/Regulation program - you can only expect a role in the latter two. More technical roles (e.g market risk) are out of reach for their account managers (they usually lack themselves even a basic understanding of the attributes of more technical roles in banking, hence they cannot discuss with clients regarding these and convince them to hire from FDM)
5. If you end up staying for more than 2 years with FDM, expect a very unfair and incompetent compensation process. The lack of knowledge on the banking industry across FDM staff as described above means that you might end up severely underpaid (even with positive feedback by the client you were placed at) because they simply don't know what the industry usually pays at the role you are working at.
6. The total compensation package is terrible when compared to what permanent employees make in banking for similar roles.
7. When account managers fail to place consultants for a period of time, I have witnessed very unethical practices in order to convince them to leave - I was told on a one-to-one meeting that since roles were not available for experienced (after being placed for two years) employees like me, I should get a job myself and leave.
8. While part of their employees are consultants who have completed their initial 2-year program and stayed with FDM, the company has absolutely no plan on how to place more experienced consultants. They seemed to simply hope that some client will reach out for more experienced staff and they'll be able to place them, otherwise consultants might stay beached for months (at the very low basic salary) until they get a role or they decide to leave the firm.
9. FDM seems to be paying no attention in helping graduates create a solid CV with some relation/continuity between roles. In practice, that means that there are cases where consultants spend their two-year period in a number of very different roles (even in different industries); at least that's what I've noticed in my experience as a business consultant with them. This lack of consistency does not usually help professionals at the beginning of their careers (especially when many of their placements last for a few months only, hence a consultant doesn't really develop any expertise in the role/field)
