shop technician

field service technician

service technician

equipment technician

truck driver

Holt Group

New owners have a lot of great ideas and are determined to push forward to diversify the company.    The drawback is the middle managers who hoard knowledge, do their best to keep salaries at a low, and worst of all they fear anyone coming up that might look better than they do.     There are quite a few folks just hanging on for retirement.  It is fairly easy to jump from one area to another (after staying a year).  However,  there is some kind of unwritten rule  that says the new salary can't be a large jump from the old salary. (which is crazy since its a completely different role)   My advice, make sure your starting salary is fair to the market because increases are pretty minimal after that. Its great to be the new guy but after 5, 10, 15 years had to see newbies with less experience come in with higher salaries.  Standardization across job roles is almost non-existent.  They have some of the most screwed up job titles & definitions - I don't know if that is on purpose or  to avoid paying market value on skill sets.     Watch for the ace up the sleeve moves like you get a 1000 Christmas bonus that comes out of the profit sharing you would normally receive anyway in April.   Vesting takes 6 years and match is at 3%  (when its there) .  On the plus side, the Accidental Death coverage is paid for by the company.  Dental and Health plans are top notch and really work out ok if you are a single person, for a family not so much.   

Current branch manager has lost the trust and respect of the entire branch. He talks down to, belittles, treats us like children and goes off on control freak micromanaging rants and when any one from corporate is around he is all smiles and hides his true nature. In the year and a half or so that he has been here, HR has gotten at least a dozen or more complaints against him but all the districts do is defend him, make him go around and be all "buddy buddy" to smooth things over, but we all see though this poorly veiled facade. He most recently got the service manager fired for "not doing his job" but we all know the truth. Branch manager had run so many people off that the service manger was doing the jobs of 3 people trying to keep this branch afloat while the branch manager sat in his office and did nothing to help. Service manager was the only one we all trusted, felt he had our best interests at hart and would stand up for us. After a recent episode of branch manager going off on everyone, the service manager got a hold of corporate about his recent behavior after we all told him we all were ready to quit and where tired of the continued verbal and mental abuse from branch manager. Next thing we know, a few weeks later the service manager is fired. They wouldn't even let him come around and say good-bye to us. 2/3rds of us are looking for another job because of this and maybe after we all start to walk, corporate will wake up and see what the real cancer is. Your not a leader if nobody chooses to follow you.

Get to work super early to beat the traffic. Check emails, trouble tickets and phone messages. Meet up with any field service technicians that may have some connection or laptop issues. Head back to office and re-check email. 

Once things are running smooth. I walk thru the store and shop areas and check with managers and users to see if they are any issues that I need to be aware of. Head back to office and schedule trips to East Texas to do a store visit to 5 remote stores and coordinate with all staff, managers, techs and sales department. Also coordinate with any external customers that may have issues or needs of customize software or hardware. 

Contact users that have called in trouble tickets or request for work. Setup new network printers, troubleshoot AP's, create new users in Active Directory, add or remove permission as requested by management. At times setup or troubleshoot AV equipment for training or con calls from other stores throughout the state.

Repair desktops/ laptops and order parts from Dell. All techs on site are all Dell certified. This also includes network printers and servers. Troubleshoot and image or re-image all computers. Assist network admin on any projects that may include new store setups, equipment to include third party techs installing fiber or running wire.

Many other task were handed down from corporate for growth or special events.

A typical job required coordination with day-shift and knowing where every technician was in the repair process on customer trucks or equipment. I was the administrator and handled all of the office procedures to include job orders, billing, collection, and customer relations.
 I assigned jobs to technicians according to their skill level and also to the skill sets they required to be successful. Sometimes I even performed repairs on customer trucks as the workload mandated while providing technical assistance and oversight for ten mechanics. 
    This job taught me the technical skills I needed and enforced the leadership skills I already started developing with the Army. This taught me team building as our shift had the less skilled but higher output.
    The hardest part of the job was keeping technicians on task and time against adversities even the chore of catching up on jobs that the day-shift took longer than required or issues came up that extended the estimated cost of the repair.

The most rewarding was to see a satisfied customer. If the customer was happy the company benefited by their repeat business. The building and increased efficiency of the technicians provided that customer satisfaction relationship.

Pay is a below average, very long shifts (10 hours) which is supposed to be offset by a three day weekend, unfortunately employees are forced to work between 10-20 hours of overtime a week. Management verbally expresses that employees who discuss their wages with each other will be terminated…. Which is against the law according to NLRB. Half the amount of holidays that most other companies offer (seven total) and sick time/ vacation are in one pot. With that being said you would think you’d get maybe a total of 25 days? No… 18 days for the entire year, sick and vacation. Lots of micromanaging, managers looking over your shoulder and coming to “check up” every 30 minutes while you’re covered in sweat and grime. Most days are spent waiting for a decision to be made. And don’t expect any rewards for working 60 hour weeks for 8 weeks straight, you’ll still work overtime the next week, and the next week, and the next. You will be told it’s in your best interest to cancel any plans with your family and children.  There is no advancement structure and titles mean nothing. There is a lot of improvement to be done to create an efficient plant in Waco, they sell more contracts than they can keep up with, which runs their people into the ground. Then wonder why 75% of the employees always have dark circles and bags under their eyes, barely talk, argue, and quit. 

I worked there for over 6 years 4 of them I was the only one on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week for all 7 stores I talked to service manager about same issues over and over each time I was told that he would handle it nothing... I would work things out with service manager like leaving at 4 on some days after putting 8 hours in to make it to some of my kids soccer games and dispatcher didn't like that so service manager told me I couldn't do that no more ... But it's ok for a certain field tech to deny to go on calls and leaves everyday at 3:00 I would work day in and day out for 6 years I was always customer focused in every way and service manager called out one field tech in a safety meeting and announced that he was the most customer focused and gave him gift cards (I rarely even got a thank you)this individual has no clue for safety he tried to change a air bag on a haul Trailer by picking trailer up with fork lift and began to stand underneath it  to unbolt bag..... Service manager loves to look the other way..i would never left if he would have just addressed some of the issues... Do not expect to work hard and move up cause they see you being valuable in a position that's were you will stay ....

During my short tenure at Holt, I met some very talented people.  Things started off well for me, but eventually the “go getter” attitude they liked during my interview wasn’t as appreciated in the day to day. After making some suggestions to improve a work process, I was directly called impatient and told that it seemed like I was trying to make my manager look bad. After that, I quieted down, but knowing that my input wasn’t valued really negatively impacted my experience at Holt. 

As working in the parts warehouse you have your fair share of nepotism, conflicts of interest and everything under the category of shadiness. The supervisors starting with with regional mangers where beyond self centered. Then we have the warehouse manager who takes it upon himself to be so self indulged in all of the broken promises and lies that his subordinates such as his leads feed him. The team leads are all too busy up in each others cheese so to speak that they dont even qualify as leads but more so lead ons. They talk a big game but dont back up anything because they are too self involved in their personal lifes to know what work is any more. The parts cashier is a bitter old woman who loves to instigate drama. We also have human resources and their endless cycle of snobs and rats who the minute an employee comes to them with a complaint about management somehow is given disciplinary action from their supervisors not even hours later. Job seeker beware! If you want to keep your sanity never and i mean never work with this materialistic lowlife employer. 

As a field service technician, typically start at 6 am. Will have at least a half hour of paperwork. When you get dispatched, better call the customer first. Some days, might get 3 jobs that don't pan out.(Customer already fixed, some one is already there, etc). Management just wants a body at the jobsite. You need to make friends with other field service guys as fast as possible, because that's who will train you. Most field service guys will help you, but there are some old grumpy guys that won't. The hardest part of the job to learn is the paperwork. I know of one guy that "donates" about 5 hours every Saturday morning to get caught up. You will be asked to break company policy, and the law. Logoff your Trimble device(DOT timekeeping device), and run overweight. You will not be provided the proper safety equipment for the job,(safety harness equipment for fall protection) even though that's against company policy, and many of the customers policy. But it's your fault if you get hurt.

I started working 3 years ago for this company. It was different then and is running good people off now. I loved it when I started. They have managed to run off all field techs and the shop manager as well as a isr for speaking up against verbal abuse in a service call transmission. They have no problem placing blame where it doesn’t belong. If you don’t look after yourself you’re not going to be there long. They are a good company for vacation time and health insurance but it isn’t worth it in the scheme of things. If they don’t like you they will dig deeeep for things to write you up on. They will find it too. But they will over look safety items and major missed items for friends. I will end on this note. It overall is a good company for benefits and even then some other companies are catching or exceeding them. They say over and over values this and that but they sold the values off to the lowest bidder in the form of hiring too many chiefs with very low to no values and the Holt values got lost along the way.  

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Shop technician 8 salaries reported	$27.45 per hour
Field service technician 13 salaries reported	$29.10 per hour
Service technician 1 salary reported	$23.50 per hour
Equipment technician 12 salaries reported	$32.71 per hour
Truck driver 1 salary reported	$18.00 per hour

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