software engineer

account manager

manager

project manager

account executive

CARFAX

What I experienced and have seen. If you are asked by your supervisor for your opinion, don't give it if you want to survive. My experience is that your ideas will either be stolen and your manager will take credit for it as their own, or you will be branded as a trouble maker if they want feedback and it is not what they want to hear.  

Many people in power are experts at deflecting and covering up their mistakes and have no issues building a case to fire subordinates who did nothing wrong. When multiple people in the same position have been let go, it's either a bad hire or bad management. With the exhaustive interview process that they have, they cant be making that many bad hires, it must be internal issues, that HR is ignoring.

Nepotism is a huge problem.

Benefits are great but the pay is poor for the position as compared to other companies. Who cares about the benefits if you are looking over your shoulder and worried about being fired.

Resources that you need are scarce. Most resources are sent to the department that signs up the dealers, DBU, but it is wasted. They always have sales contests and spend big money on trips etc to sign dealers, but there is a finite amount of dealers, so basically they are signing the same dealers on a special promotion, over and over in a cycle that never ends and no one is measuring retention. The money and resources wasted there come at the expense of the rest of the company. If an OEM partner comes on board and the dealers need to be signed, they take a back seat to the DBU sales contests, in other words only the dealers with bonus money assigned to being signed are going to get signed up. There is no teamwork between departments or metrics in place to foster any cooperation or help.

A flat organization will likely mean little chance of promotion.

Little clicks and groups should have ended with high school, but they are prevalent.

HR pushes profiling the employees in an attempt to help managers in their job and coworkers become a higher performing team but, no one uses the profile. It's a feel good tool for HR but not actually practiced and a shame.

Overall it is a very frustrating company to work for. Lots of talent not being used and suppressed, or being fired and pushed out the door. Many growing pains that are not being handled well.  

CARFAX is up for sale which has been in the news and now some dealers are taking legal action in a class action which should make things interesting.  

It may have been a good company to work for in the past but I did not find the hype about being a top place to work to be true. Also, it was very disturbing to be pestered and pressured to fill out the survey positively so they could say they were a top place to work.

Positives: Carfax benefits are great and there are lots of breaks for celebrating different milestones and on the surface it appears to be a great place to work, but its deceiving.

Negatives

Wisdom of crowds is something within the company culture, but SR Management only follows employee opinion when it is convenient for them. If the consensus of an employee group or team is one thing and the managers think otherwise, they will override the wisdom of crowds input. They do this so frequently that employees wonder why SR Managers use wisdom of crowds at all.

Meetings. Lots of meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. Sr Management loves to have meetings to appear that they are doing valuable work but they never follow up on all the material produced in the meetings.

Lemon awards. These are given out annually by the company president and it’s a nice idea but most people who receive the award got it because of their job position, not because they did anything spectacular, which is frustrating for those who go overboard and try hard but don’t get recognized.

Nepotism: This is rampant and one family in particular works there and they are always fast tracked into management even though they lack the skills to do the job.

Not all, but many people who have worked there are in high positions and they avoid work, which will make getting your job very difficult. It is a culture where the long term employees have lots of power and will force out those they don’t like, especially if the person they are forcing out was able to show that they avoid work and compromise the company.

Be a good suck up: The only way you will get work done is to suck up to the lazy people in the company that have been there forever, who don’t do a thing, and get away with it. You have to beg to get people to help you.

Recap

On the surface it looks like a great company and in some ways it is, but it will be very frustrating working there. It’s difficult to achieve your metrics when the internal roadblocks are massive.

I worked at CARFAX for a very long time and it used to be an amazing place to work. You really felt like everyone cared about everyone else. Man has that changed. It now feels like you are in a daily competition to keep off "the bad list". God forbid you have a bad day and your numbers take a dip or you disagree with a new process change and vocalize your opinion. They say they want you to feel free to speak your mind and that they want an open team but they don't. The first time you don't agree with anything they say, you are automatically considered on the list. Not a place you want to be. If they want you out, they make your life miserable until you quit or they let you go. 

It used to be about taking care of the customer, now it's all about how many people you can get to and who cares if you are taking care of them properly or they walk away happy. Quality has taken a backseat to quantity and metrics. Management used to trust you to do your job. Now they are constantly tracking you. God forbid you take too many bathroom breaks or stand up to talk to a coworker/ask a question. All of the sudden you're a slacker. 

There is always pressure to fill out the employee survey to show what a great place to work CARFAX is. You can just walk around and tell how great it is now. Where there used to be smiling and laughing and people enjoying their job, now everyone has earbuds in and heads down trying not to draw attention to themselves. People who cared about their job and their customer have long gone and has been replaced with people who only care about themselves or those that used to care and are now just treading water trying to hold onto their jobs. It's sad. 

While the benefits are indeed great, it's not worth the stress and aggravation that comes along with it. Better to find some place that truly cares about their employees and not just the appearance that they do.

It is such a shame that Carfax has declined and is no longer a great place to work. The senior management team is in denial and thinks that people who voice their negative opinions about the company are part of a small handful of people who are bad apples, but what is happening is a rapid decline in core values within the company. Their corporate culture previously was celebrated for empowering their workers and allowing creative freedom to find new ways to work, but now the culture is one where they are suppressing creativity and sharing of opinions. To say the company is having growing pains is an understatement; they are not handling it well.

Carfax will be a tough place to work with challenges on many levels, so much so that after a while, the pay and benefits will not matter. This is not to say that everyone is unhappy, but so many people have become frustrated in watching a great company decline.

Expect to find high levels of nepotism, unprofessional managers, and a shortage of resources to get your job done. Don’t be surprised to see highly qualified passionate coworkers dismissed for nothing other than their managers were protecting their job when someone stellar was beginning to outshine them. Carfax is not the company they previously were, but they will still try and sell you the cool aid, and inspire you with past accomplishments and being voted one of the best places to work. Just remember, that things change, they never remain the same.

Typical day at work is finding people who can help you get the job done. Some departments have the resources they need but my department was thin on resources and that made the job a tough one. Working there I learned that companies change and at one point may have been a nice place to work, but sometimes they change. I did not find the hype of being one of the best places to be true, at least not in my department. Management was poor and I can not understand why one family has so many people working there, because it causes problems. Coworkers were great for the most part. Hardest part of job was the lack of resources for my area. Also they will frequently make videos using employees to praise the company at are used internally to pump people up, but if you did not want to do it, you were pressured a lot and had to do it anyway and say things you did not believe. Also did not like being pressured to fill out the survey with false statements about what a nice place it was to work there so they say they were a best place to work. Most enjoyable part was leaving there because now I have an employer who really likes the work I do and gives me what I need to get it done, which idid not have when working there.

This year the company has a new motto, "Do more with less!"

The new motto should give you clues as to how the company culture is changing at carfax, toward the negative.

There have been some talented hard working people who have been swept out the door, and worse yet during the holidays. It's not fun to see people used this way, especailly when as a coworker, you know the reasons they let go of someone were not true, and the employee was set up to fail. Carfax culture in the past would not have allowed something like that to happen, but things have changed as the company has grown.

It's easy for a manager to save money in their division by eliminating people, and not replacing them for a few months. The carfax hiring process usually takes some time to select a candidate anyway, so it is easy for a quarter of the year to go by without an employee to fill the spot, thus saving money which in the end, will net larger bonuses in the spring. Carfax has always prided themselves on running lean, but this year with the new motto being to do more with less, you can see values being compromised within the company.

What a shame that this is happening.

I thought this company was going to be a great company to grow with, but they don't give new employees a chance to grow.  I feel like it is high school all over again.  They tend to favor the employees that grew with the company from years ago, and get rid of the newer employees without a chance.  There is no training. What have I learned?  Not much of anything.  I am learning management does not communicate here and if they want you out, they make your life miserable.  Management is a joke.  They really need to take management skill classes and get confidential consistant feedback from coworkers.  So many people not happy, but worried about a job.  Very few co-workers happy, unless you are on the "good list", and you definitely know if you are.  Too much micro-management going on, which I thought ended years ago.  Only negative communication is given.  Most of the attention is given to the Sales Team.  You can tell who they are, because they are the ones walking around smiling.  The hardest part of the job is making management happy.  Never seems good enough.  The most enjoyable parts of the job would be the VERY relaxed dress code and Free Friday lunches.

You can search the internet and find that Carfax has put itself up for sale. This may explain some of the employee turnover and it would probably be a good guess that the uncertainty will cause problems.
Of course, once a new owner is found, who knows what that will mean as far as employment.

I found Carfax a challenging place to work at with little support in the area I worked. Few resources made the job difficult to do. The company ranks departments in priority each year and my department was not high on the list, so there were little resources available, but the managers did not care.

The benefits while good, don’t make up for the frustration on the job, and the organizational structure is flat so chances of promotions are slim.

Carfax was also recently challenged on the ABC news show 20/20 which anyone can search on the web, and it would be worth looking at.

Recap: Good benefits, frustrating work, little help, little chance of moving up in the company, the company is being sold, and employee turnover appears to be increasing.

Everyday travel to 7-10 dealerships. Account Maintenance and upsell acccounts already managed with new products. My position is in charge of 199 accounts. I am on the road everyday,  all day visiting my accounts (7 a day on average). I normally meet with the decision makers and the managers to ensure everything is up and running and promote our partnership. I also upsell any new enhancements we had to offer. I put out fires, make sure there are no problems and if there are work towards a solution. First in mind is to make sure they know the value and importance of their partnership with Carfax and the benefits we have to their business. I also put together proposals, sales goals as well as my own metrics. Work with a close team of other Regional Managers, Strategic Sales and Field Sales.

Simply put, it probably will be a frustrating place to work if you are the kind of person who has high ethics and has works hard. Resources that you will need to accomplish your objectives are very thin, and unless you work in the marketing or dealer business departments, you will struggle to get bandwidth to serve your internal and external customers at the level they deserve. Adding to that is a huge nepotism problem in the company which creates another set of challenges entirely. The ethics issues have to do with a distortion of facts and also has to do with how some people navigate within the company. You may have difficulties if your values do not match. Growing pains abound!

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Software engineer 31 salaries reported	$82,905 per year
Account manager 6 salaries reported	$72,500 per year
Manager 6 salaries reported	$94,833 per year
Project manager 3 salaries reported	$97,333 per year
Account executive 3 salaries reported	$69,333 per year

Working at CARFAX: Company Overview and Reviews

CARFAX

CARFAX Ratings

Popular jobs at CARFAX

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected