Applied for Management Trainee program online & received phone call within a few days. Scheduled interview for that week & met at the district office.
The interview dress is Business Professional, the job itself also requires this. Interviewer was very pleasant but I definitely felt as if I was being looked over, hair/outfit/face etc. It was almost to the point where I wanted to stop talking and ask if everything was ok. I had read prior that they judge a lot on looks so determined this was common for them to do. Some questions: "Why did you apply to Enterprise?", "Tell me about a time where you dealt with an unhappy customer, what happened?", "Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?", "What is your sales experience?", "Why do you want to be a manager?", "Why should we hire you?".
Towards the end of the interview she brought out a binder which included paperwork to look over consisting of salary/hours, dress code, career path information, etc. She then asked if I had any questions and I asked a few about her experience with Enterprise & the types of people they look for. Every answer she gave was pretty standard with little personality. She proceeded to tell me she would recommend me for a branch observation and 2nd interview & said the branch manager would be in touch. I received a call from a lady the next day & set up the observation & interview.
I was comforted by the guy I was there to observe, he was very pleasant, like the lady I had met at the district office, & I felt good about working at Enterprise despite the horribly negative things I read about long hours, little pay, and very little work/life balance. I asked him for advice about interviewing with the area branch manager & he warned me that she was "unlike anyone else". This immediately made me nervous; my great experiences with my first 2 Enterprise employees was completely ruined by her.
I honestly feel sorry for this area branch because this lady had 0 interviewing skills to make someone feel comfortable and I'd be very weary of the people that actually please this lady. She made Enterprise seem like a slimy-sleazy-car-salesman-id-take-the-shirt-off-my-coworkers-back-to-get-to-the-top corporation. I find it almost ironic that she inquired about my morals & ethics when she made herself and her coworkers seem like they had none. She asked questions that I thought were inappropriate: "What other jobs are you applying for?", for which I tried to go around and she persisted, "What specific companies are you interviewing with right now?" Rude. Especially to go after twice, but this wasn't a surprise. Her & I could not have been any more opposite; she asked "How many times would you take the answer 'no' from a customer?" I replied that certain situations have to be judged on a case-by-case basis, a finely tuned equation measuring variables such as personality, mood, environment, etc. and she wanted a direct answer. To find out later she stuck in that she "never" took "no" for an answer & would almost, not even almost, she WOULD get to the point of INSULTING customers to get them to buy their insurance plans etc. Everything at Enterprise is judged by sales, I believe the only reason this lady had top sales is because people would rather pay $16/day than to have this "I never take no from anyone" loud mouth, overly aggressive, rude salesperson in their face.
I believe I had too many morals/ethics for this position. I am a competitive person & have a great foundation to become a great salesperson; however, when asked about my competitiveness I told her that I appreciated fair competition. For example, I would not want to be standing at the front desk with a fellow coworker, have the phone ring and someone walking in, and he and I scheme on who has to answer the phone or who has to take the customer & battle it out to see who gets the better potential sale. She later told me that that is actually EXACTLY how it is. Ooops.
Overall, I would like to believe the Recruiter & the Assistant Manager are more like what Enterprise actually is as a whole. Unfortunately, with their extremely low salary for insanely long hours (they build your overtime into your salary so basically, there is no overtime pay, but you work the overtime hours) I believe the Area Branch Manager is probably a more accurate depiction of what integrity Enterprise has. They are a cut-throat business, which is fine with their competitors, but they are cut throat with the team that is supposed to lead them to success and because of that, they will not progress nearly as fast or successfully as I believe they would if they had people that had heart. That lady would sell Enterprise to the devil for the right price, I am looking to belong to a company that people value, and not only monetarily.
If I can credit the Area Branch Manager for one thing, it is seeing that Enterprise and I probably weren't a good fit for each other, most especially under her supervision.