Hertz Reviews

Pros

Alot of hours. get paid every Thursday plus overtime and bonuses

Cons

Promotions are based on hitting your sales numbers

Advice to Senior Management

Look for people who desire to be in sales

Pros

Working for a large corporation. Was able to grow within the company and be challenged on a frequent basis.

Cons

With my new manager came a very harsh environment where you pretty much didn't matter as a person. And that was in HUMAN RESOURCES! It was difficult to put a smile on my face and sell any positions at the company when I didn't even feel like I was treated as a person.

Advice to Senior Management

Check your people. Just because you have someone that is always willing to take on assignments and projects doesn't necessarily mean they are qualified to manage a team of people. I know I wasn't crazy because there was a lot of people who were unhappy and left or were lucky enough to end up in another area of the company.

Pros

fast paced job
get to know your employee members well
good benefits
meet lots of people
experience good level of customer service

Cons

low employments need more employees
gives alot of pressure on sales
promotion is all based on sales which hertz sales are challening

Advice to Senior Management

need to hire more people to work
need better system to run brach
faster acess for fleet to get cars

Pros

Great place to cut your teeth when starting out in the business world. You will learn alot that will assist and prepare you for your next opportunity.

Cons

While management asks the right questions and gives the impression of caring what your opinion is, don't be fooled.

Advice to Senior Management

Try and live up to the mission statement. Looks good on paper !

Pros

You will learn a tremendous amount about customer service as well as sales. A good job for someone just entering the workforce and looking to learn marketable skills. There is opportunity for growth within Hertz if you play your cards right.

I will put the ability to earn a bonus as a pro here, but again as a con (I'll explain in the Cons section). If you can make good sales numbers (insurance and upselling vehicles), you will be given a certain percentage of your numbers as a monthly and quarterly bonus. the opportunity is there if you can harness your sales ability, AND get customers that are not stingy.

Cons

The biggest con with Hertz is the cutthroat atmosphere surrounding new manager trainees. The #1 goal of a manager trainee is supposed to be getting good sales numbers, but is easier said than done. The biggest problem to watch out for is co-workers stealing your regular good customers (ones that purchase the insurance!) and running away from the counter when they recognize a customer that never buys anything.

The second major con is what I had previously also describe as a pro, the ability to make a bonus. Currently (as of December 2011) manager trainees were paid a base hourly wage of $10.50 and were expected to make between 28-32k per year when all is said and done after the bonuses. The big problem with the bonus structure stems from the difficulty of reaching the minimum numbers to make the bonus. When management sees the sales numbers rise, they will in due course raise the minimum numbers to earn the bonus. This results in an endless cycle of feeling cheated, stressed, or in worst case scenarios, not paid a bonus at all and having a tough time making ends meet at home.

Advice to Senior Management

Stick to one main idea/standard of measuring performance so employees can appropriately adjust to the rules and feel like they can trust upper managements ability as well as their altruism for employees.

I can say with confidence that most employees, not just manager trainees, feel overworked and under appreciated by a company that they provide 110% of their energy for.

Pros

Fast promotion potential
Driving cool cars (Mustangs, Maximas, Towncars, Yukons, etc)
The non-management employees in my area are very friendly and helpful
The day at an HLE location flies by very quickly

Cons

Frantic, desperate work environment because of the chronic understaffing
If an employee in your branch quits or is fired (usually for low sales numbers) it will be weeks or months before s/he is replaced
Area managers are constantly breathing down your neck about your sales numbers
As many others have said, senior management is constantly demanding more results and giving you less resources
The phones never stop ringing
Very poor pay, which is causing talent drain

Advice to Senior Management

My advice to senior management: Read what most every front line employee is saying about your company. You took away the positive incentives for selling the damage waivers and insurance supplements (commission) and replaced it with a system based on fear of being fired, intimidation from incompetent upper management, and then you wonder why the company is being driven into the ground. Talented, experienced employees are constantly being fired for not selling enough insurance when these policies are very hard to sell to begin with. You have created a work environment where the front line employees resent your decisions and are looking to escape.

This company's senior management, as others have pointed out, is all about making short term decisions to tell Wall Street about that are very harmful to the company in the long run. The fact that you are constantly whittling down your workforce, leaving all branches in my area grossly understaffed, is causing extremely poor customer service. We are late to almost every appointment at the satellite offices because we cannot keep up with demand. Everyone that I know in the area is looking for a way out.

The pay for what you ask us to do is appalling, and there are not enough employees to get the work done. Then the area managers start harassing us over the phone, demanding to know why is there so much overtime at our branch? Let us have another employee, and there won't be so much overtime. Beating someone down over their sales numbers is not going to help them improve. If you want someone to get better, and there are alot of employees here worth investing in, then get them some sales training courses and stop harassing them on their private cell phones every day.

The latest scheme from upper management in my area is to beat down the branch managers to the point where they all leave (several already have), and then have the MT's (whose pay is equivelent to a car washer) do manager-level work without being paid for it. We have no time whatsoever to try to get new business from body shops, because we have a reputation in the area for never being able to keep appointments on time and we never have cars available.

As soon as I manage to get just 3 or 4 cars clean on my lot, the area manager calls to demand to know why my utilization is so low. He then threatens to take the cars, which he usually follows through on. And then imagine that, four hours later I call him back to let him know that I'm turning away business because I literally have no cars left. Wash, rinse, repeat, every week. Back off. If you want to have me running a store with no training, then let me make management-level decisions.

I know talented people who are obviously experts at sales have one bad sales month, and suddenly they start getting written up over stupid stuff, which just makes them hate the company and look for an escape route.

This company really could be a great place to work if the senior management would just spend one lousy day on the front lines to see the real effects that their short-sighted cost-cutting decisions are having on customer service. Angry customers aren't going to come back. Stop expecting me to grow revenue if you won't allow me to have more employees and more cars.

Yes, I'm still an MT who is basically functioning as the branch manager without getting paid for it, which happens alot because the company is not motivated to promote, as promotions come with pay raises which they don't want to give out. You will see very quickly, at least in my area, that you are chasing a carrot which is always just out of reach until you get fired for poor customer service surveys and low sales numbers. I'm not sure how juicy that carrot is, because once you get put on salary the company believes they can just make you work 70+ hours a week. The area manager makes significantly less than I do per hour worked.

I would use this company as a resume builder, because the job titles are relatively impressive: "Management Trainee." They are willing to hire recent college grads with no experience, use the company just like they are using you and then get out. That's my advice

Pros

can promote quickly if not fired

Cons

Hertz systematically fires it's employees, if you don't use unethical sales tactics you won't be around long. Very low employee moral, I've seen 3 good workers fired.

Advice to Senior Management

I dunno, industry has some real problems, branches must use high pressure sales and run too tight on cars to be profitable, too bad it creates a bad experience for employees and customers.

Pros

- Training, Great people, Car if you get one, Exciting work environment. Lots of vacation.

Cons

Different Pay for the same work. Disconnect from the front line. Sustainment of any corporate program is unlikely. Layoffs at the front lines or tenured employees while promotions go out to new younger people into Corporate jobs that add very little value. Weekly directional change with spending/projects/ what is important.

Advice to Senior Management

We are losing marketshare and pretending its because of the economy. US Rental car is down ~5% but we are down much much more. The company is being driven into the ground under the guise of increasing shareholder value. The customer who rents a car is the one who suffers.

Pros

Once you become branch manager you get to drive home any car on the lot at the end of the day
Opportunity to drive a lot of brand new cars from all sorts of makes and models
Depending on your branch, a supportive manager that will teach you the trade

Cons

The pay was low and you're constantly running around
Working an 11 hour workday isn't abnormal
You have to vaccum cars

Advice to Senior Management

Pay grade is too low for all that you ask us to do. Make it easier to move upward in the company and offer better compensation

Pros

You get to drive some cool cars. Get to meet a lot of interesting people.

Cons

Long hours
Management only looks out for their pocketbook

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to Branch Managers. We are the people that really see what is happening.