Management Trainee Review

I enjoyed my placement with enterprise rent a car a lot when I first started. The training was thorough and there was so much to take in I knew I’d be facing different challenges each day. However as the months rolled on the job role did get a little bit samey. The people that work there are great, I worked at various different branches gaining insight into the different operations in each and everyone I came across was switched on and just an all round nice person in general.

On a friendship level, quite highly. Everyone had each other’s backs and it was actually one of the things I looked forward to most when going into work at the start of each day. However, on a business level I feel that once management felt you were good enough to complete all the basic tasks they left you to your own devices which made it hard to work yourself up the progress ladder.

In the first 3 months direct support was in an abundance. I felt it was a lot harder to liaise with the HR team and they seemed a little distant. This is only my personal view though and I could be wrong about them. After 3 months you get less support as you’re expected to know what you’re doing and you sort of plateau from there on.

All the branches I worked in were super busy. It’s just how the business model is run really. Not necessarily a bad thing though, as the day can go pretty quickly, but the hours are long and having the same rush day in and day out can be very tiring. There are quiet days here and there but they can’t really be forecasted for, they just appear out of nowhere.

I felt like you had to make your own responsibility, otherwise you’d be left to do just the basic tasks throughout the day. What I mean by this is that you’d have to ask to do certain tasks rather than be allocated them by management. That’s all well and good but due to being new you’re unaware of what jobs even need to be done in the first place.

This is an odd question for me because my degree wasn’t really anything to do with renting cars in the first place, so it’s hard to comment. Anyone doing a business degree or similar though would definitely benefit from Enterprise’s management trainee scheme. The placement has developed my character in many other ways though and I’m super glad I took a placement year regardless.

In each branch I worked at there was always a decent atmosphere. The gang like to do their bit for charity and seasonal festivities too. So we’d have own clothes days, decorate the offices and have a laugh in general. Birthdays and other special occasions were celebrated with a nice get-together too. I enjoyed the general atmosphere in the office.

The program is very good in theory, but in practice I feel like it’s hard to stick too and after you’ve settled there isn’t much room for progression or variation in the job role you fulfill. It does become rather samey. It definitely isn’t Tea making and filing for a year though haha.

In the first few weeks it’s a very thorough and rigorous training process to aim to get you up to speed as quickly as possible. So by these means they do invest a lot into you. After you’ve made good headway I feel they drop this investment a fair bit, which is unfortunate.

There is almost certainly an offer to come back and continue your career with enterprise. It’s a very safe option in the sense that I reckon they would take back anyone who did a placement year with them, went on to graduate, then asked to work again after graduation. I personally will be seeking for another graduate scheme after I finish university.

Due to the job role it wasn’t like placement employees grouped together and did their own individual work, we practically did the same job as anyone else in the branch. Therefore there wasn’t really a social scene to speak of amongst fellow placement colleagues in Enterprise. Everyone got along with everyone

Working and living in London is always expensive, but I was fortunate enough to live back at home with my parents so rent was very cheap in comparison. The wage is pretty decent at enterprise so even if you did have to rent accommodation near to a local branch you wouldn’t be too hard done by.

Our socialising was mainly through organised events so we’d always go up into town for a celebration with work colleagues from multiple branches in the surrounding area. There isn’t too much local apart from a few pubs but that’s just because of the area I live in, nothing to do with Enterprise haha

There was a competition where if you performed well and made the criteria for the top 25 best performing employees in the group (roughly around 500 employees in said group) then you got an all expenses covered day out with those employees. This was held once a month. Apart from this competition there were minimal other activities.