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Fidelity Investments continues its hiring multi-year hiring surge, announcing Tuesday the creation of 9,000 more jobs nationally. The company hired more than 1,000 employees during the year’s first half at its big Westlake center, and plans to hire another 1,100 there this year, Scott Orr, vice president of government relations and public affairs for the company in North Texas, said in an interview.
By the year’s end, Fidelity will likely be up 2,200 new employees at Westlake compared to the 6,000 it finished with at the end of 2020, Orr said.
“We’ve been on a fairly heavy pace,” Orr said. Fidelity in 2019 introduced zero-expense ratio index funds, commission-free trades on U.S. stocks, and no minimum balances in brokerage accounts.
Demand surged and continued through the pandemic, Orr said. Fidelity hired 4,700 people companywide in 2019, 7,000 in 2020, and more than 16,000 so far this year, he said. “There’s just a very healthy growth.”
"Fidelity’s hiring is across all job functions, particularly client-facing positions (44 percent) and technology (9 percent), helping to create new products, like Fidelity’s Youth Account, and digital asset capabilities, like enhancing the digital asset trading experience," Fidelity said Tuesday. "All of Fidelity’s jobs help people live better lives by making financial expertise broadly accessible and effective."
The biggest part of the hiring has come amid the pandemic. Fidelity sent virtually all of its employees home to work remotely and is still in the process of what it calls “re-entry.”
“It was the day before my birthday; I remember this,” Orr said, recalling March 11, 2020. “We had already been having conversations about flexibility and the nature of work. We had already worked out the details. We went from close 6,000 people (on the Westlake campus) to less than 100.”
The company had to determine how to maintain compliance with federal Financial Industry Regulatory Authority rules requiring in-person training for investment professions. “There was a little bit of scrambling,” Orr said.
In May and June this year, the company began gradually inviting employees to come back to the office, under various protocols. “We are pretty clear that our goal is to keep all our employees safe,” Orr said.
Today, about 10% of the Westlake campus’ employees are back in the office on some level, he estimated.
“Most roles will continue to have the ability to work from home, most of the time,” he said.
Going back to its pre-COVID conversations, Fidelity determined that “to be an employer of choice, we need to offer flexibility.” The company had already moved its office environment to “hoteling,” away from fixed offices and toward work stations where “everybody just plugs in” when they’re in the office, he said.
Maintaining the company’s culture while allowing flexibility is a challenge. The sprawling Westlake campus, for one, is designed to foster collaboration, socialization, and open conversations about career advancement. It even has a stocked pond for employees’ use. “We do believe strongly in our culture, which really only happens in person,” Orr said.