Hertz Reviews

Pros

1) The potential to get promoted fairly quickly
2) In the Local Edition branch of Hertz, you learn to do EVERYTHING that goes into the rental process that can give you tools to use for other jobs.
3) Branch Managers and above get to take a car home everyday with insurance and "free" gas.
4) At the branch manager level, you are practically running a business without having to supply personal capital.
5) Fairly good benefits (options to buy various qualities of health insurance)

Cons

1) Manager promotions are often given based off of high personal sales/fraud numbers and being "friends" with the hiring manager and it seems as though little consideration is taken into whether the person can actually manage or even encourage a team to sell (legit selling and not fraud).
2) Hertz promotes from within which is great, but the employees that worked initially at Enterprise "there are a lot of them" get promoted up the ranks almost at an obscene rate. Almost as if senior management believe more in the training program of Enterprise rather than their own company. Which I guess is fine if they really were great employees, but they get promoted so fast that they never learn how things work at Hertz and end up having to delegate (i.e. give all the work) to the 1 or 2 employees that were trained at Hertz.
3) Low hourly rate which is to be expected for a sales job... but in the Local Edition branch of Hertz Manager Trainees (MT's), Manager Assistants (MA's) and especially Assistant Branch Manager's (ABM's) do so much more than just sales (i.e. Fleet control, vehicle cleaning (in a shirt and tie), Marketing, Data Entry, transporting, customer service, billing, answer lots of phone calls, etc) that the hourly rate should either be higher or remain the same but hire people to do some of the other functions so the "management level" employees can focus more on sales and management.
4) Bonus structure that seems to change every time it seems too many people may actually get a good bonus...not to mention when they change it, its normally effective immediately so if your branch was on track to make a bonus on the old structure for the quarter but not the new one, it doesn't matter, your branch WILL NOT get a bonus.
5) Upper level managers spend more time in meetings and forwarding emails about meetings and then having conference calls about those meetings and emails rather than using the time to actually make things better.
6) Although it is a car rental company, its ALL about selling insurance. An employee's worth in the company is primarily measured by their Sales Revenue Per day (SRPD) and their Insurance Replacement Sales Revenue Per Day (IRSPRD), if a customer buys the insurance these numbers go up, but if they do not, these numbers go down, and fast. So renting a car to a customer that wont buy the coverages actually negatively affects the agent. This scoring method causes it almost to make more sense to NOT rent a car if the agent knows or "has a feeling" they cant sell to a particular customer.

Advice to Senior Management

Either pay Local Edition managers more for the non-sales and management jobs they do, or keep wages the same but hire or contract to other companies the menial jobs so they can focus on doing their jobs better and with less risk of burning out. And promote fairly, not just because someone worked at Enterprise...it just devalues the Hertz Management training process

Pros

Nice cars
always hiring (quick entry)
earn experience as a sales rep, manager, and customer service
leadership classes offered which pad resume

Cons

Incompetent management
Unrealistic sales goals
forces you to be shady towards customers and co-workers
cleaning cars in business attire
managers always hassling you about sales numbers

Advice to Senior Management

Lower sales expectations to a reasonable amount and monitor when employees are altering contracts and ripping off customers to improve sales.

Pros

-It was a relatively easy job
-The rental car discounts were great!

Cons

-Have to deal with incompetent management that doesn't stock the fleet, so you run out of cars.
-Low pay

Advice to Senior Management

When you run out of cars be available to deal with upset customers

Pros

if your are good at sales, you could make good $ with bonuses

Cons

Poor management, too much work for little pay.
You end up taking the fault with customers because managers don't stick up for you.

Advice to Senior Management

They need to make their corporation a more enjoyable place so that more people want to work there. Everyone of my employees where stuck there because they couldn't find a job elsewhere.

Pros

The working hours are good and flexible. The coworkers are friendly and professional to work along side.

Cons

Poor management skills, awful communication, and no team work among the upper management.

Pros

Drive some the coolest cars in the industry.

Cons

Cleaning cars, working with lazy indviduals, boss comes into office late and leaves early, working two saturdays a month, long hours, and little pay

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your MT a little more,

Pros

Weekly paychecks
Learn so much about working with a big Corporation and in a fast paced environment
Learn about values that can not be taught in a class room

Cons

Working off-airport, be prepared to do EVERY single thing esp if you are a manager trainee.
Stressful, long work days, low income
Performance solely based on sales

Advice to Senior Management

Apply a 6 sigma as a culture and embrace employee's concern and complaints. Pay more for off-airport employees to increase morale

Pros

Good bonus potential in the right market/situation
Company car/ car anytime you travel in the US
Good leadership courses
Good process improvement courses
Major holidays off in off airport markets

Cons

10-14 hour days if you want to run a solid profitable location.
No life balance
No laptop to do work from home.
No blackberry to answer emails on the road
Always busy when other people are off
High turnover
Terrible pay for entry level grads out of college.
Inside sales are more important that outside sales for promotion
You clean cars no matter you title in the field
Chasing too many KPIs

Pros

It's a large company so in today's economy there is a bit of security there. You get a car with gas and insurance paid for which is really nice. There is a chance for advancement if you do well but it seems like a right place right time luck kind of thing as well.

Cons

My schedule was 45 hrs base. Low 50s was the average for hours in a week. Throw in a big travel weekend or a natural disaster and that got to 60 easily. At the end of the quarter you will see stoppages on hiring and overtime regardless of how much work needs to be done. This is just cost cutting to make sure wall street goals are met. But if that work needs to be done the salaried "manager" gets to pick up the slack. I have stayed overnight cleaning cars on multiple occasions just to make it through the next day.
Recently there has been another change to the bonus structure that was presented as a way for us to be able to get more $ and implement TQM. I got $4k last year and $0 this year in quarterly bonuses. Other manager at other locations have shared similar stories with me. Just another corporate cost cutting measure if you ask me.
Overall it seems like LMs are looked at like batteries and easily replaced. Better than being unemployed or working a low wage job when you have a degree. But I wouldn't stop looking while I had this job.

Advice to Senior Management

Get feed back from the troops on the ground and don't dismiss staffing concerns as a common complaint. If many locations have a problem maybe it really is a problem and not everyone complaining. Better investment in talent ID and development could help. You have LMs who put in 55/wk and skip break and others at the same location that work 40 and make sure to take breaks. But when it comes to review time everyone gets the same scores based on the scores the AM gets from the region GM

Pros

Pay for performance
Competitive
Growth in a struggling industry

Cons

Employees are just numbers
Bottle neck as you move up and will have to move to get ahead

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management is so focused on the stock price they make short-term strategies that are detrimental to the long-term success. For example, a desicison not to replace termed employees to save money today but the reality is that affects customer service for months to come and years later accounts remember that at one point Hertz was understaffed, thus losing future success.