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SEPTEMBER 18, 2006 
No. 5 Enterprise: A Clear Road To The Top "You're not stuck doing the same thing over and over again" Not even the CEO's son gets off the hook. When he was 16, Andrew C. Taylor walked into his dad's office at Enterprise Rent-A-Car with his sleeves rolled up, ready for work. The tools? A bucket of soapy water and an oversized sponge. That was 30 years ago. Now Taylor is the chairman and CEO of Enterprise, and he's a long way from cleaning windshields. The clearly defined path from the bottom to the top helps explain why Enterprise fared so well in BusinessWeek's "Best Places to Launch a Career" ranking. Even though the pay is among the lowest on the list -- less than $35,000, on average -- Enterprise offers a unique training opportunity for entry-level hires. Management trainees start at the bottom, learning every aspect of the business, but those who catch on quickly get a chance to run a branch office, where they're responsible for everything from ordering office supplies to hiring and firing employees. "Everyone here looks at you as future management potential," says Stephen Cullen, an assistant manager in Fort Pierce, Fla. "Your goal is to get everyone under you promoted." When Cullen came to the company last December, he enrolled in a four-day crash course that focused mostly on company culture. But the real training takes place on-site at Enterprise's more than 6,500 branch offices worldwide, where management trainees are assigned. Training usually lasts 8 to 12 months and can include helping customers, dealing with body shops, and, yes, washing cars. Sarah Ruddell, an assistant manager in Rockville, Md., says the variety forces you to think on your feet: "At Enterprise, I get to work on customer service, marketing, sales. You're not stuck doing the same thing over and over again." After a year, promotions nearly always follow -- first to management assistant, then to assistant manager. It is at this stage that employees begin to supervise and mentor others and become eligible to serve as branch managers, overseeing the office's workforce, rental fleet, and finances -- and they're expected to turn a profit. Within five years most go on to take positions at headquarters or become area managers, responsible for all branches in a given region. The training program doesn't always go without a hitch. In June four assistant managers sued the company in federal court, alleging that they were classified as "exempt" -- and therefore denied overtime pay -- even though their job duties included many normally performed by nonexempt workers, such as picking up customers and working the counter. Enterprise says the suit is "without merit" and that it has no intention of changing the training program, which has been in place since 1957, when the Taylor family started the business. "What's unique about our company is that everyone came up through the same system, from the CEOs on down," said Patrick Farrell, vice-president for corporate communications; "100% of our operations personnel started as management trainees."  By Paula Lehman
BW MALL
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