Spent 2 Years Here--Everything You Need To Know
Pros
I read pages of reviews before I joined this company 2 years ago and the summed-up conclusion was and still is very accurate: It’s a GREAT "first job", you learn excellent Sales and Customer Service skills, which are quantified by metrics that you can use on your resume, you are going to work with AWESOME people, and you're going to have NO work-life balance. That’s everything you really need to know before signing up. A review posted on here titled, “Fantastic opportunities to learn – beware of burnout” posted on April 4, 2018 is the most accurate description of this job—they really touched on everything. Try filtering your search to find that review because it will answer all of your questions. As far as my .02, I loved this job for the first 4 months, then got comfortable until I hit the year mark, and after that gradually began to hate it more and more until my last 6 months when I hated my life here. The PEOPLE are definitely the main upside to this job and are really what made the day to day tolerable. They hire a certain type of fun and energetic personality, so you will meet people from many walks of life that are all equally fascinating and awesome to hang out with. Your peers can turn the difficult conversations you have, and all terrible people you have to deal with into funny stories at the end of the day, and that’s what gets you to come back tomorrow. I made many friendships at work that continued outside and after Enterprise, and this job really helped me get comfortable after moving to a new city. After people, the only other positive I really see is potentially the ability to land a great sales job after Enterprise. This job is a performance-based role that teaches you, and really can teach anyone, HOW TO SELL. Some people find they are great at sales, and really run with it, getting jobs outside of enterprise in pharma/medical/Tech sales, and make a ton of money. I personally know many people who did this and ended up being really happy working great jobs. Other people find that they absolutely hate sales and everything about it, and end up going a different route. It’s completely up to the individual. With that being said, let me now explain the cons.
Cons
After the people and the ability to land a great sales job after this, there really are no upsides. If you realize you hate sales and customer service and want a new job that has nothing to do with either of those, it can be VERY difficult to tolerate the daily grind here, let alone find a new job. Those are the only two skills you get out of Enterprise, and some people realize they want nothing to do with them. Your customers can really be a drag, and most don’t want to be in a rental car agency dealing with a 22 year old. Most people also have negative stereotypes of rental car businesses, so many people come in suspicious that you are trying to sell them on everything (We are) and can be really nasty. This is something you learn to get over and deal with, but for me the most difficult aspect was having the SAME conversations with people all day, every day. That was tough. You ask everyone the same questions, and act interested in their story even though you’ve heard it a million times. I realized I didn’t want anything to do with a customer service job after this one. Lastly, probably the BIGGEST DOWNSIDE to this job—the work/life balance. There isn’t one. To give you an idea of my daily schedule: Woke up at 5:30am to be at work at 6:30am to clean cars that dropped overnight before we opened at 7am, had lunch anytime between 11 and 2, and we closed the doors at 6pm. BUT we had to clean all of our cars before the next morning, so we would always leave about 6:45ish. By the time I got home at 7:15, I had time to cook and eat dinner, spend like 2 hours with my lady, and then go to bed and do it all over again. And while at work, all you are doing all day long is renting cars, selling products, consoling angry customer, repeat, repeat, repeat, etc. Every rental car branch has its own hours, and some are better than others, but MOST of them are going to be 7-6 or something similar, which means you would have a similar schedule to me. Its fine to do this for about a year, but after that, you should find a job that offers a better quality of life. So, to SUMMARIZE: Do this job for a year or so, meet some cool people and make friends, make decent money (41k/annum), get invaluable customer service and sales skills, work you’re tail off, put those sales metrics on you resume, and then after a year find an awesome sales or recruiting job where you have a way better work life balance and paycheck. Or, you could skip all of that and just find that job now, instead of later. Hope my review gives you some insight.