entry level outside sales representative

training specialist

automotive consultant

entry level manager trainee

entry level business development

The Reynolds and Reynolds Company

I truly believe my work experience at Reynolds & Reynolds was unique to the exact team I was on or sub-department within the company. The management did not work well together. I had a head supervisor (who made our sub-department) and two supervisors below her. My team was female dominant as the tasks we were accomplishing fit better within a female personality. The manager of our team didn't even know what we actually did nor took the time to really understand it. So when issues arose, proper conclusions and solutions were never made. Eventually the head supervisor went back to sales and the two sub-supervisors continued to lead the team. Favoritism was a huge issue, but on top of that - forming close relations with your team members cause so much strife. Interpersonal relationships caused drama and biased opinions. That in one moment I was following the rules, they made exceptions for what someone else wanted. We had people who definitely disliked others on the team who performed quality control checks on every sales document we made. Our performance evaluations were dictated on how many mistakes we made. The other QCer was nice to everyone and graded fairly. I would be QCed by the nice girl and get back maybe 2-4 mistakes I needed to correct. The other one, I apparently would have 8-12. This gave me so much anxiety. This stemmed mainly from drama and the rules our making sales documents literally changing every single week. I can roll with the punches and I knew I was doing a good job, but for my job progression being ruined by someone who didn't like me.... that was not okay. I also was bullied by someone on the team. This was her second offense and was in the process of her 3rd. I went to the head supervisor about the issue because one of the sub-supervisors was best friends with the bully. And we were strictly told to not have secret meetings and that they had to be on our calendar so people knew when we were away from our desk. So that our managers could properly track that we are doing work and not just messing around. I made a meeting request for a meeting that bully suggested and stated she was not going to make a meeting invite, but we were going to be away from our desks for the rest of the day and totaling 3 hours. My supervisors reassured me that I did the right thing and they were tired of us being away from our desk for that long without it on the books. That girl came to my desk afterwards and yelled at me, told me no one on our team trusted me because I was a tattler, and how basically my place on the team was over. Her best friend was the QCer that after that incident no longer liked me and then gave me bad reviews on all my work. So I used to joke to my friends who were in other departments that never experienced anything close to what I did, and I used to call our company "Reynolds High School." I felt like the drama was unprofessional, uncalled for, and immature. I was the youngest person on my team fresh out of college battling a 30 year old woman. So anyone in a manager position, do not be best friends with your inferiors. You can be best friends with other people in the company in a lower stature than you, but being able to respect a friendship and leadership position is challenging. There needs to be a healthy gap, or else you could possibly have someone bully 3 people on your team and you continue to save her job when she doesn't deserve it. Or you should encourage her to move to another team. It was a toxic environment for me. I was so stressed about job security due to those unprofessional relationships. I know I did a good job, and in some ways I helped fixed some issue or take a step towards a resolution. So if you are starting out, and you see that type of behavior do not be afraid to speak up about the reality going on on your team. Because following the rules isn't that hard. Saying you'll be in a 3 hour meeting isn't that big of a deal in a large company like that. People have to make sure you are doing work. I don't understand how that was a hard concept to grasp. Anyways, my ability to move to another team I felt was impossible after my experience there. So I looked for jobs outside of the company. I vocalized this to my supervisor and she actually understood. I graduated with a BS in Biology, and that was my true passion. The day I walked out, she said that she was going to give me a good review and that I would be able to work for the company again if I ever wanted to reapply. I think the perspective of that team on their team is skewed. I think they feel everyone has to conform to ideals, and sadly their ideals on that team are not okay. I support the supervisors for trying and continuing to keep the team going, but I think they need to make sure they are maintaining the bigger issues. They need to make sure they are actually putting out the whole fire instead of letting the coals still burn and flare up again. The running joke for this company was 1) you get good raises 2) it is super hard to get fired. Within my team, there were 3 people fired in 2 year span and they gave the worst raises. The one they gave me was a joke because "I didn't handle pressure very well." Well I think I did because most people don't get thrown into a drama mosh pit literally on their second day, have to take the bully talking trash about another teammate every day and have to awkwardly be like, "Uh okay, that is unfortunate. That sucks it is that way...", and then be bullied by said bully who was trying to get another person fired. So please tell me how that is remotely normal? (Disclaimer - if there are any typos I went on a rant so please excuse them)

The documentation department at Reynolds is the epitome of cubicle culture: drab, fluorescent, and hierarchical.

Management is structured so you report to other writers with seniority (called editors, but I don’t think they get additional pay for that title), then supervisors, then a manager, and then a director. Most technical writers who have lasted are knowledgeable and friendly enough. The supervisors are hit or miss. Mine was very understanding and supportive, but I’ve heard stories about others being worse. The supervisor you end up with is luck of the draw. The manager of the department is nightmarishly critical (about style guides, about cleanliness, and about fun) and out of touch. In complete honestly, they are notoriously disliked by most associates I’ve spoken to, but they’re here to stay. The director is pretty busy and feels relatively hands-off.

The culture is basically non-existent. You wear business casual every day, unless you donate to charity for jeans on Fridays. You stay in your cube, and if you’re caught socializing, you get verbal warnings and write-ups. Lunches are free now, and most associates have lunch together. The associates were the best part of the job, and pushing the tables together in the cafeteria so we could all sit together was the highlight of the day every day. Management is predominately old, conservative, white men. The associates, I found, were a bit more diverse and liberal. You have to be able to put on a sort of subservient, palatable mask to interact with management if you don’t already fit their mold. Oh, and no tattoos.

If you don’t fit their expectations, they’re really good at slowly pushing their employees out by giving write-ups for small things, or by sending passive aggressive emails. I had a couple friends who had worked at the company for longer than I did, and they were eventually criticized so much and felt so under-appreciated that they left. I felt like I was under surveillance constantly, and never let my guard down at my desk. Not all departments are like this, but documentation and software multimedia production are. If you can apply for software education, do that instead.

The training period feels disorganized, and even though I learn quickly, I often felt unsure of what I was meant to be doing next. I was thrown into a big project before my training was finished, too, and the support was limited. There are numerous style guides and antiquated softwares to familiarize yourself with, so even if you are a great writer, being a good technical writer at Reynolds can be challenging. I think I’m pretty smart, but I felt incompetent a lot of the time.

Getting hired is a breeze, and the benefits are spectacular. Since I left, they’ve added free breakfasts and free lunches for all employees, and the food is actually pretty great. There is a clinic on site that you can visit during the work day, and there are resources for free mental health care, too. 401(k) matching is also good, but you have to be employed for longer than I was to qualify for it.

That’s the kicker. The turnover in the documentation department is unmatched. The associates have either been there for years, or they just started. There is very little room for upward mobility, and I really can’t stress that enough. I don’t think there’s any chance of becoming a supervisor unless you’ve been there at least 5 years, and even then, they are saturated with supervisors. It’s a small department, and upper management has been in their roles forever. If you want an entry level technical writing position, this is a great way to get that experience and get out. If you have any kind of aspirations for making more than 50k, or of having seniority, you won’t find it here.

Overall, if you can keep your head down, teach yourself the skills, and look busy, you’ll survive. I didn’t last long, but I was also incredibly bored. The benefits are great, and the people you work with can be some of the best people you’ll ever meet, but you have to be prepared to deal with poor management. I am not at all a disgruntled former employee, but I can promise you that if you take this job, you’ll be unhappy for most of it. There are bright sides, but you have to search for them. It could be a great temporary fit, but I would not go into this with too much hope.

This review is specific to being a technical writer in the documentation department. Ever since the previous CEO resigned and the current CEO took over, company benefits have increased. This includes increased vacation, free lunch, and some WFH after working for a year.

Nearly every writer is currently searching for other jobs. The only people happy in DOC are management and new people who have not spent enough time in the department to see how the department truly works.

First the good. If you get a job in the DOC department, you'll like the people you work with. The interview process is long and requires multiple tests, so few people end up getting an offer, but the ones who do are generally very pleasant to work with and ended up becoming great friends. Also, whenever someone in the department has a birthday, we all gather for dessert and socialize for 20 minutes. It’s a nice break, and if you are busy or don’t want to socialize you can get dessert and go back to your desk.

The bad: Management will micromanage you and people have said that management treats you like you’re a high school student. For example, they will go through your desk every two weeks and point out small, pointless things to address. These include loose papers on your desk, loose papers in your overhead cabinet, removing post-it notes on your desk, balloons in your overhead cabinet (“they serve no business purpose so please get rid of them”), anything on the outside of the cube, or anything you hang in your cube that isn’t hung up using 4 push pins (yes, it must be one in each corner or it cannot go up). This is specifically the DOC director’s policies, and if you go to another department on the other side of the floor where he does not have control, it feels like travelling to a different world. Everyone who has left the department has said how their new job does not micromanage like the DOC department at Reynolds did.

The ugly: The DOC director is grossly incompetent at doing actual work that helps the department and spends way too much time networking or doing anything that we need him to do. If you don’t get something done by a deadline they will notice and get on you, but nearly every packet you work on will get to the DOC director for edits and then go overdue. If you ask him about it, he’ll say he’s busy doing things that we don’t get to see. I’ve had work that’s been overdue with him for years (yes, years). Yet if you have something overdue by a day he will get on you. The hypocrisy in the department drives people insane.

It also takes a few years to fully understand and become an expert at your job, but by that time most people have already had enough and quit, so there are only a few experts in the department. The DOC director likes to be liked, so everyone who first meets him likes him but once you start to learn more about how the department is truly run, your feelings will change. If something is a bad policy, usually it’s the director who is responsible, but he will make it seem like it’s the supervisors or the company’s policy.

Your coworkers will change drastically over time. Even though there are only around 15 writing positions in the department outside of management, 18 writers have left DOC in the past 3 years. It’s just a constant cycle of people getting hired, getting frustrated, and then leaving.

Advice: If you have another job offer, take that job. If this is your only job offer, take it but continue to look for other jobs. The vesting period is two years, and a lot of people leave once they’ve reached two years. You’ll like the people you work with, but the job will drive you crazy at certain points.

If you take your time with the long hiring process, have patience with the horrible management (with a few exceptions), don't ever want to send any complaint to the out of state HR about hostile work environment, and need job experience in technical support, then this is the place for you. 

Specifically the Draper office (IDS inc is the incorporated company located there), works on Residential Mortgage document services, not Auto like the rest of ReyRey. Because this is different from the rest of the company there is no formal training on the job for more than just the systems, and so knowing as much as a certified mortgage loan officer was needed by a couple months in for any non-IT/Coding Jobs.

Their Customer Support job isn't a call center Customer Service job where you just take simple calls, but it is advertised as one, and the pay is about the same as a simple call center job. This was great to put on the resume because I learned a lot of technical information quickly, but the environment is toxic because those who don't learn quickly or don't learn how to get what they need quickly are deemed uncoachable because management is unsupportive, but act the part (minus a few cases). Most people who don't kiss up to management or people in the know don't learn about specific industry knowledge needed on the job, however all Customer Support reps at the time still had the power to make multi-thousand dollar mistakes during training once they get a computer. In the end office politics or intense knowledge/prior experience in the mortgage industry is needed for you and the company to thrive. 

The company has a lot of customizable automation for the documents process done by customer service agents, so my background in computer coding helped. I had to code/scan through code daily per email requests and or phone calls to put band-aids on the system, or help a customer use the system after one of the monthly software updates. If you don't know coding before starting this can be a point where having an in office mentor is needed, especially because the coding language used daily is proprietary, and so codeacademy/the internet won't help. The monthly-ish updates were an anxious time because they broke the system often from all the little code imbeded over 5ish years by people with communications backgrounds who have a knack for coding simple without long term reliability/scalability. There is no good history of what changes are in affect, so helping customer's on the phone meant that sometimes you had to stare at code to find a change made 6 months to a year back, for good customer support. Not being allowed to even talk to the software development department due to general bad history between Customer Service management and the Software Development management made for a lot of bad deployments as well, which raised the customer support calls and occasionally made for a bad few days of work. 

If you want a simple job or have technical experience don't come here. If you want a technical job but lack experience, come here and watch your back.

The datacenter will hire you without any professional IT experience (provided you can make it through the incredibly annoying interview process), which makes it a great place to beef up your resume if that's your desired career path. You will touch on many different aspects of IT, from hardware configuration/installation/maintenance, to network configuration and troubleshooting and everything in between, with plenty of downtime to pursue IT certifications at your leisure. Joining the datacenter team means you start on 3rd shift and gradually make your way up to 1st shift. Unfortunately, there is no guaranteed timing or criteria -- it all depends on what the business needs at that point in time. Luckily, I was only on 3rd shift for about two months, but some of my coworkers were on 3rds for over a year before an opportunity opened up for 2nd shift.

The pay is... okay. Surely not anywhere close to industry-leading, but again, this job requires no professional experience. You'll get regular increases every 6 months or so, but nothing crazy. My biggest complaint is that if you get promoted, say 1 month after your review, they will not adjust your salary until your next review. I was "promoted" yet continued to receive the same pay as my old position for 5 months, and the same is true for another of my coworkers who left around the same time as me. 

With that being said, that's really the only thing that left a bad taste in my mouth with this company. I enjoyed the work. My co-workers were great. Management was great. The campus itself was really cool and has some great perks that I'm really missing at my new job, like a gym, a cafeteria, and a convenience store. Not a big fan of them trying to police your health -- random nicotine tests and only stocking the vending machines with sugar-free sodas is kind of weird, especially considering a) all the coffee makers have giant cans of sugar for you to use and b) every company-sponsored event becomes a booze-fest...I mean you either care about your employees' health, or you don't, you know? But it's ultimately not that big of a deal, just a little annoying.

In summary, I enjoyed my time at Reynolds. I learned a lot about many different facets of IT, and it opened a lot of doors for my career. I'm not inherently opposed to going back someday -- just maybe to a department that pays more than the datacenter.

The third shift requirement was not disclosed until the in-person interview stage. By that point you've already invested time. I would have appreciated knowing that upfront so I could make an informed decision before committing that time.
I was let go with no warning after only a few weeks, despite having received a satisfactory performance review shortly before. Make of that what you will.
The work itself isn't bad, but there are some things applicants should know going in. If you're applying for the data center, you will start on third shift — there's no getting around it. If thirds don't work for you, don't bother applying. You do train on first shift for about a month, which includes access to their free food — and then that goes away when you move to thirds, which is a bit of a gut punch.
This is not a traditional desk job. You will be on your feet most of the shift, there are no assigned desks, and there's quite a bit of walking depending on your rotation. It's also more physical than you might expect for an IT role, which caught me off guard coming from a desk environment.
On the technical side, there isn't a tremendous amount of IT work — most of it is escalation with limited hands-on troubleshooting, which was frustrating for me personally. Some assignments involve checking security cameras and locked doors across a very large campus. On thirds you'll have minimal supervision, which can be good or bad depending on your preference. Despite being the newest hires, you're expected to install and remove equipment, and the workload can feel overwhelming quickly.
The company is also fairly conservative — hair cannot touch your shoulders and shirts must always be tucked in.

Company executives know your name and your coworkers are likely very nice. There are many after work activities including tennis, volleyball, and softball. The company is fully vested in your 401k after 2 years.

The company, in recent years, has put a large emphasis on marketing and sales at the expense of product development and support. In short, they lie to customers to sell a product that does not function as advertised while not providing the technical support team with enough manpower or documentation to adequately assist the customer. Middle management seems hampered to fix any real problem in the system while executives refuse to acknowledge that they are not working in Shangri La.

A typical day would start by showing up ten minutes early so that you can be logged in to your system by your normal start time.  Phone calls would occur as soon as you become available due to the under-staffing of the team. The phone would continue to ring until lunch, then the process would repeat until your shift was over.

It is highly likely that you will learn empathy for frustrated customers and the ability to not be phased by anger.

The management are decent people that understand what their underlings are going through, but understand that there is no way to fix anything.

Your co-workers will likely be fresh out of college and looking for better jobs.  There is a high turnover rate.

The hardest part of the job is seeing a multitude of ways that things could be fixed, but knowing that they will remain as is.


There's a fun, family atmosphere within the department as well as in other departments. We have many outside activities both company sponsored as well as just coworkers and their families getting together off the clock to hang out and do things. My coworkers have become my best friends. When my family recently experienced the loss of a member, my entire department sent condolences or came to the services. The VP and Director even flew in from Ohio. If that doesn't constitute having caring and genuine associates and management I'm not sure what does.

The open door policy allows me to knock on my supervisor's door and voice any ideas or concerns without fear of reprimand or dismissal. Every six months I sit down with my supervisor and go over my work and am eligible for a raise. They only promote from within so when a supervisory position comes open, I won't have to fight outside candidates if i's something I wish to pursue. My supervisor also started at the bottom as well so she understands where we're coming from. All of the internal training allowed me to come into the recruiting department with only banking and daycare experience previously and become successful within my department. 

The onsite healthcare center and gym have saved me so much money, and the food in the dining hall is excellent with many different choices and inexpensive compared to eating out in town for lunch each day.

TLDR, not a great place to work. The company has some very good aspects (training incentives and classes they offer for free, on-site gym and cafeteria, decent compensation) that are quickly drowned out by a cut-throat, back-stabbing, focus-on-mistakes culture that will suck the life out of your sails. I worked with fantastic people in Sales Administration who believed in sharing the workload, offering to work overtime and come in early in order to complete the MANY tasks assigned to our department; I worked for below-average people - a management team who was quick to discipline and VERY HESITANT to notice initiative and reward hard work. They were even slow to recognize hard work, much less compensate their employees for it.

The culture became toxic and untrustworthy - they eventually had us treating our Sales Representatives (members of the company who sold out in the field) as HOSTILE CUSTOMERS. The expectation for how we were to behave was miles off what situations called for.

Overtime was expected (cough, required) while management left at 4-4:30pm everyday, citing "personal business". Most management members would pass down urgent work assignments right at the end of the day and then leave for the day.

Do yourself a favor - if you're looking for a year of work experience in an office, or a career, look elsewhere. Or, work in a different department. But beware of Sales Administration.

The culture and people at Reynolds and Reynolds are great, but that’s essentially all they have. 

The company’s longevity is a mask that hides their declining sales. The systems they try to sell are antequated and arbitrary for the growing and changing direction of the Automotive Industry. The Retail Management Systems they sell are bulky, obsolete, and in many instances actually hurt the dealerships that do business with them. 

Unwilling to change, Reynolds and Reynolds holds on to the business practices established 50 years ago with no regards to advancements in efficiency, technology, and RMS business infastructure. 

From start to finish, you begin to see the errant and archaic methods used to conduct daily business. From the 4-7 separate interviews, to the 18 month on-boarding process, and on to the blind eye they turn against innovative advancements made by competitors, the big picture and long term outlook is murky to say the least. 

Still being run and operated by a man nearly 80 years old, the company doesn’t have a clear course of action to continue business if upper-level personell changes are required. They aren’t quick to adapt, either, as 4 of the 7 managers explained to me during my interview process. 

If you’re looking for a long-term career path, I suggest choosing a company with proven growth in revenue, rather than almost 20 years of declining sales.

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