Great Entrepreneurial Experience but at what cost?
Pros
Working for Hertz have given me immense growth personally. The Car rental industry is not for the faint of heart. I learned (and still is) so much about myself and what I want out of a company. Hertz has a long way to go in terms of employee satisfaction. As much as the position entails working long hours, the people you work with are with good hearts. They truly want the company succeed. I wouldn't still be in the position I have if it were not for the staff I work with. Their dedication for the job to get done makes me work harder so that they feel that they are appreciated. They are my motivation. The car benefit is great. However, be wary, it is a taxable benefit and therefore not really a benefit at the end. It is just a convenience. The bonuses basically is for making up for the tax associated with the car benefit. Your work day is not the same every day. The challenges are similar but everyday is new day. Work is interesting.
Cons
The culture of Hertz is very US-centric. Working in Canada, where business culture is very different (even though many people assume they are the same), there seem to be a lot of red tape surrounding policy changes, proposals, or any other changes you want to make to create an effective and efficient operation. The realities of each city in Canada vary yet the whole country is regarded as one region. It is frustrating for Location Managers and Area Managers to constantly reason with Upper Management on why we need actions to be done in terms of controlling reservations or why we need specific fleet mix. Compensation seem to be a hot topic within the organization. Since HR is not localized, many policies are generalized and does not reflect the location's realities (economic growth, labour market, standard of living, etc.). Locations that are unionized are vastly different from non-unionized locations. However, they are treated the same in terms of salary expectations. In a place like Calgary, where jobs are in abundance and competition for workers is high, management is expected to recruit talent with limited bargaining power. We constantly lose great candidates once they hear the wage for a position such as a Vehicle Service Attendant. Every two years, hourly wages are looked at however, I still think that it is not up to par according to industry standards. You want to attract great talent then compensation must be looked at locally rather than as generic as possible. As a Location Manager, you rarely get a 40+ hours work week. I average about 60 hours a week now. However when I first started, I was working 7 days a week, many days back to back. I lost many of my sick days and vacation days that I was entitled to due to not having proper coverage for my department on the first year. There is no such thing as banking days off. It is the nature of the industry, a nature for which isn't very healthy. Work/personal life balance is out of the window once you take on a management role within Hertz. Training is on the job. Many of the skills gained would be mostly soft skills as the technical skills are Hertz focused. The software used at work are not necessarily transferable to other positions. Who still uses Lotus Notes for communication? Hertz does. There is a lot of information to process within the first few months of being a Location Manager. With no formal training, you pick up habits that may not necessarily be ethical but it works for the situation given and that is how it gets done. Development is done using online courses. Having centralized departments just makes the processes really redundant and long. HR, IT and accounting are all in different parts of the country so solving issues can take long. A simple password change or an equipment break down would take days, weeks, even months to get rectified. I waited for a month to get access to systems I need to do my job, even then I had to teach myself (my manager would help but when he himself was not familiar with the system, I just felt like the blind leading the blind) on these said systems.