Archive
By Staff Report
Jul. 8, 2003
Name: Marie Artim, corporate HR manager, recruiting, has been with Enterprise for 11 ½ years and in workforce management for about nine.
Company: Enterprise Rent-A-Car, a large private company based in St. Louis, was named after the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. The company has about 600,000 vehicles in its fleet, more than 50,000 employees and over 5,400 locations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Ireland.
Inside story: Enterprise hires about 6,000 college graduates each year–perhaps more than any other employer in America. Most are management trainees
Recruiting function: Enterprise employs 200 company recruiters nationwide. Artim oversees the recruiting function and reports to the senior vice president of human resources.
Philosophy: Enterprise says that it promotes from within, and it does. Management trainees can become branch managers. After that, they could move into higher management positions, or into areas of the business such as sales, recruiting or operations. Eventually, they could be VP/general managers. Almost all of the company’s vice presidents started out as management trainees. It’s part of the company’s promise to employees that if they come to work there, they have a chance to move up at a rate based on performance, not seniority. Says Artim: “You take care of your people–employees and customers–and everything else kind of falls into place.”
Technology: The back-end of Enterprise’s recruiting is powered by a company called SHL, which also handles other aspects of Enterprise’s recruiting management, such as providing interview guides to recruiters.
Favorite source: Artim says the company’s employee-referral programs are her best source of candidates. The reward for a referral varies by location, but employees generally get recognition, a bonus and often a chance to enter a contest for a trip or other prize.
Next-favorite source: It’s a tie between schools and the Internet. Enterprise’s 200 recruiters work closely with colleges and universities; each recruiter usually focuses on four or five schools. The company networks with professors, career centers and others in a university, and works closely with student organizations like Students in Free Enterprise. Students involved in theSIFE organization, Artim says, are usually the kind they’re looking for. “These students are very entrepreneurial, very dedicated and driven.” Online, the company posts ads on a variety of sites, including the three biggest career sites, and tries to bring candidates to the Enterprise site. It has also recently started working with the site DirectEmployers.
Diversity recruiting: To make sure its applicant pool is diverse, Enterprise works with community organizations like the National Urban League. It also finds candidates through Web sites such as IMDiversity, BlackPlanet, AsianAvenue, MiGente and iVillage.
Who Enterprise wants to hire: Enterprise wants people who are interested in business operations, sales and customer service. It looks for candidates with strong leadership skills, a customer-service orientation, a good work ethic and flexibility. An Enterprise job, Artim says, “is kind of your personal enterprise, and you can make it what you want, based on what you put into the job. There’s so much opportunity.” Enterprise uses behavior-based interviews, which include questions about applicants’ past experiences and times that they’ve displayed the Enterprise competencies–like a strong work ethic and customer service–on the job. A typical question from a hiring manager to a candidate: “Tell me about a time when you’ve dealt with a difficult customer.”
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