SoFi-ety Special: Our Dedication to Career Development

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By Fairygodboss | June 29, 2021 | |

SoFi is proud to partner with Fairygodboss, the largest career community for women, to improve gender diversity at SoFi. The original version of this article can be found on Fairygodboss.

Financial independence is a dream for many. It doesn’t have to be a pipe dream. Enter SoFi. This values-driven company is on a mission to help members get their money right. They create modern financial products and services that help people borrow, save, spend, invest, and protect their money better, so that they can achieve financial independence and realize their ambitions—from owning a home to saving for retirement, paying off their student loans, and more.

SoFi was founded by Stanford business school students in 2011. Originally started to offer refinancing for federal and private student loans, SoFi has built a suite of products, from home lone refinancing to easy investing, and more. They celebrated 1,500,000 members in 2020. SoFi recently talked to Fairygodboss about their mission, core values and how they differ from your traditional financial institution.

What is the mission of the company?

SoFi’s mission is to help people reach financial independence to realize their ambitions.

And financial independence doesn’t just mean being rich — it means getting to a point where your money works for the life you want to live.

Everything we do at SoFi is geared toward helping our members get their money right. We’re constantly innovating and building tools to give our members what they need to make that happen.

What are its core values?

Our core values are at the center of how we think about serving our members, building our company, and most importantly, how we work together. At SoFi, it’s not just what we do — but how we do it.

Put our members’ interests first.
Run after problems.
Embrace diversity. Everyone should feel welcome, included and able to contribute.
Get to the truth and make principle-based decisions.
Make your footprint bigger than your foot.
Do the right thing. If you’re not sure, do the harder thing.
Set ambitious goals, be gritty, be accountable.
Take care of other people and help them grow.
Iterate, learn, innovate.
Be SoFi missionaries.
…and don’t forget to smile.

What differentiates the organization from others in this space/industry?

We are on a mission to help our members achieve financial independence to realize their ambitions, but we’re also dedicated to helping our employees achieve their career ambitions. As a member of the SoFi family, employees have the opportunity to drive unparalleled impact at an organization that’s helping to transform the fintech industry. More specifically, they can…

Make a real difference at a mission-driven organization: Experience firsthand their impact in empowering our 1.5M+ members to get their money right.
Create member-centric innovation: Build a next-generation technology company changing the way people think about and interact with personal finance.
Discover and run after career ambitions in a values-based culture: Gain experience across a vast breadth of businesses and products, plus work with (and learn from!) leaders and peers from different industries to drive career growth.

Describe 1-5 employee benefits that positively impact women who work here.

We offer tuition reimbursement to our employees for continuous learning.
Through Maven, we provide seven different support programs for parents that are planning to start or grow their families. We also offer Modern Fertility test discounts, care.com memberships, and back-up child care.
We provide parental leave and top-off plans for pregnancy disability leaves.
Lastly, employees may take advantage of fertility benefits offered through one of our medical plans.

What career development opportunities can female job seekers expect from this organization? How is career pathing approached?

At SoFi, we are committed to building a culture where people love to work, and in turn, can do the best work of their lives. We believe our people are our greatest differentiator. If we take care of our people, they will take care of our members.

Here are a few of the ways we approach career development:

SoFi recently launched “Grow,” a mentorship program that helps foster career development for our most underrepresented team members. Our goal is that these future leaders receive real-time feedback and active coaching so they can learn essential business skills to will support their professional journeys. This program aims to provide professional sponsorship for mentees.
SoFi is committed to internal mobility and strives to develop early career seekers into candidates for roles across the company. Our goal is to ensure at least 50% of all hires come internally from our Operations team.
We also offer comprehensive, ongoing professional training for our Operations team, which provides the tools for them to develop lasting careers within our rapidly growing Fintech company.
Our SoFi Manager Onboarding Program is a series of trainings and resources designed to cover (nearly) everything new managers need to know about managing people at SoFi, from how to foster inclusion and belonging on their team, to building their personal leadership brand. Our goal is to give all managers the tools they need to support and inspire their teams to do the best work of their lives.
We truly believe in the motto of "never stop learning," so we offer frequent trainings, mentorship opportunities, and leadership programs to develop our people. We’ll also cover tuition costs for approved programs, currently up to $5,250 per year.

Why should women want to grow their careers here?

We’d rather you hear it straight from our employees themselves!

“It has been an incredible journey being at SoFi, knowing how we impact people's lives every day. SoFi has given me the opportunity to get into Fintech, learn new technologies, switch career paths to management and continue my learning process. Being a mom of two children, the flexible work environment is an added benefit.” — Anjana, Engineering Manager

“I have never been part of a company that truly looks at decision making through our values and through our values first. It is a breath of fresh air to always know we will lean into our values to make the tough decisions, and because of that, we forge a path with our Members that are trusted and guided on principles we all truly believe in.” — Shanae, Lean Six Sigma Analyst, Operations

“I love working at SoFi because of the people. It’s truly one of the best work environments I've had the pleasure to work in. I feel like everyone is super helpful, willing to take time out of their day to chat about vulnerabilities like Imposter Syndrome or discuss coding questions so that I understand what the problem is. On top of that, the people love to joke and have fun, which is really important to me to get to laugh while working and love what I do.” — Courtney, Software Development Engineer

Is there anything else women should know about pursuing a career here?

Diversity and inclusion is a top priority at SoFi. One of our core values is embracing diversity and ensuring everyone feels welcome, included, and able to contribute. We have two Employee Resource Groups, what we callSoFi Circles, that support women and parents, plus many more that support the diverse communities represented at SoFi:

Women at SoFi: Fosters greater empathy, connection, and engagement across SoFi, while giving allies the opportunity to be involved and understand the things that are uniquely important to women in the workplace.
Parents at SoFi: Supports current and future parents at SoFi, while creating an environment where people with shared experiences can connect and help each other have both a successful career at SoFi and a rewarding family life.

The individuals featured are SoFi employees. Their personal experiences, obviously, do not take into account your own specific objectives, financial situation, and needs. Results will vary.