I started on the ground floor of the Carvana Inspection Center opening day (December 3, 2018). I was one of two hired recruiters. Neither of us had any previous background in recruiting. We were expected to excel due to our sales experience and charisma, and beyond that we simply screened potential employees.
We spent our first two days learning the work habits and culture, so we could better explain to future candidates. However, our original supervisor was easily the least organized person I’ve ever met, and needless to say, we were left keeping ourselves afloat most times. Whether she was showing up late for a meeting or work itself, the only consistency with the HRG was that there were none! There were multiple times my colleague was written up for attendance purposes, meanwhile I was tardy or absent just as often with no issues. I quickly came to the conclusion that our supervisor had discriminatory tendencies. There is no reverse racism. Racism is awful every way it comes. There was plenty to be seen at Carvana unfortunately. I've heard favoring of individuals, and the original generalist was far from a poster child for any human resources department I’d ever worked with.
The core values are plastered all over the break room once inside. But they’re just pictures. The concepts are ingenious and a beautiful thought-process, but they never quite came to life. Speaking of core, my hours were also supposed to have a core time frame, contrary to what I was told when or
Prosmarketplace, free water, The Office streaming, breakroom culture
Consno benefits of working for a car company, corporate, constantly compromises core values
1.0
Insurance Verification Specialist | Tempe, AZ | Feb 24, 2021
Horrible experience
From day one, the experience was horrible. First, I’ll tell you what the job is SUPPOSED to be. You are supposed to be either assigned in casework (this is essentially underwriting) or inbound calls. The inbound calls are advertised as “customers calling in to ask questions regarding their documents or the status of their application”.
The job you will be doing is not what you are “trained” to do, nor what it is advertised as in the hiring process. The job is a constant chain of dealing with cases that were mishandled by other representatives, irate customers due to the fact that their case had been continuously mishandled, and sifting through technical issues on a near constant basis. This is hard to explain, but I’ll try. In casework, most cases you receive will have already been touched by multiple other representatives. When you’re doing casework, you are reviewing documents and calling customers to tell them what additional documents they need. Because the casework is touched by so many other representatives (who have received the same questionable training you will receive - more on that later) the majority of the time, the previous reps have handled the case wrong. It is your job to call the customer and tell them that, oftentimes causing them to lose their delivery time because we don’t actually have all the documents needed, or they’ll lose the vehicle all together. You can imagine how those phone calls go. When you are taking inbound calls, you are not simply “answ
ProsCompany paid medical
ConsTraining, leadership
2.0
Loan Verifications Advocate | Tempe, AZ | Sep 14, 2020
Decent pay but the new hire training program has much room for improvement
Work-life balance
They should provide you with more paid time off due to the high level of stress you face on a daily basis. I started around the beginning of the year and so far besides my mandatory sick time which was pro-rated to 33 hours I’ve earned a total of 30 hours PTO in six months. So outside of my regular 40 hour shift there is not enough time PTO to have a healthy work/life balance.
Pay & benefits
The pay is not sufficient for the amount of responsibility they put on you as a Verification Advocate. The benefits are actually great since they pay for your heath insurance and offer a wide range of options for additional coverages. They also will not provide you with a pay raise until after one year of employment so keep that in mind.
Job security and advancement
They have a very strict attendance policy and do not offer a lot of PTO. If you are a minute late even from your break hey will doc you a point and five points moves you up a tier. Which there is a total of four tiers then you are placed on a final written warning. So do not apply here if you plan to miss work. They do not accommodate very well for when life happens. I had a out patient surgery and had to miss work and they did not even take that into consideration because I was not an employee for 60 day’s yet. So they moved me to a tier two. I had a legit medical reason so as a company they let me down. So if you want to be a slave for Carvana you will most likely have great job security and plenty of roo
Carvana, in my opinion, is a great company overall and has a great culture with all of the team leaders and advocates. Carvana, as a company, is growing in every way; from the amount of people working there, expanding markets, but also getting it processes down pat and getting all of its members on the same page. The major issue, as many have already spoken to, is the fact that the training does not always reflect what you will actually be going through while on the job/on the phone. The training does prepare you to use the systems and menus that you will be going through, however, there were countless occasions where customers would ask questions or have issues that you were never trained to handle, nor do you even know where to start sometimes to solve them. This prompts you to do what's natural: to ask. The problem is that you have to ask in a chat channel called Slack (similar to Discord) and you have to wait for a response. Sometimes your question doesn't get answered and this leaves you in a tough spot. You can't leave the customer hanging but you can't get an answer and this puts you on an island. There are some things that do get answered, but you would not be trained to know these answers; you basically have to ask and that's how you find out. So many questions or problems were only answered by having a hard time and keeping it in mind for future reference, for yourself and teammates. However, in my opinion, that isn't how people should be learning. We should be trai
ProsDecent compensation, 401K, Insurance Plans, room for advancement
ConsStressful situations/customers, situations to deal with that you aren't trained for
Everyone’s experience is different...but here is my perspective
Work-life balance
Work-life balance at CARVANA is all over the place
Pay & benefits
My pay and benefits at CARVANA was manageable
Job security and advancement
In terms of job security at CARVANA, It’s all about who you know and how many TLs and managers you a person becomes social with. Favoritism is a huge thing with Carvana. You will get recognized for the good work you do but it’s rare unless you really bring attention to it. Your work really does not show for itself. You can advance if you socialize with the TLs and Managers become friends with them and leave during work hours to eat at a restaurant which means moving around delivers and doing extra work for there enjoyment. But those are our leaders....
Management
In general, managers at CARVANA are trash nothing else to say but that. There is no point in confiding to your TL because all the other managers and TLs will know about it because they have group messages that they talk in and majority of them hang out after work so they are friends. They are forever cracking jokes on employees for the lack of work they do but the TLs move delivers off of their schedule to add to another employees schedule when they feel they don’t have enough work or the deliver is too far. Which would be find if the TLS/Managers were actually doing work at the HUBs they just talk , eat or leave for the day.
Culture
Collaboration with my colleagues at CARVANA is exciting my coworkers were lit. The team was awesome and i hope everyone succe
Worked at the Orlando location for 3 years but never moved up. This is a good company but lacks good management. The way you move up in this company is brown nosing, you are not promoted based on your qualifications, the company has a Georgia manager that comes to Orlando to select a lead driver and supervisor when that manager knows nothing of the drivers work ethics or personal qualities (Note: I HAVE 3 plus years as a assistant manager for a FBO on the airport for private and military aircraft but only was viewed as a driver) the supervisor position was given to someone with less to no experience. Carvana have promised drivers lead promotions to a driver if he relocated to another state and when he did a year ago to this day he is still just a driver now working 9 hour plus days. Orlando location lacks the “know how” when it comes to unexpected occurrence for after hours, which is when majority of the drivers a rolling, Lack of security at present location , lack of communication, lack of standard equipment like truck bulbs ,fuses ,PPE etc. Carvana doesn’t value Senior drivers, while I was an employee I saw the management assign new drivers to be trained by drivers who been with company less than 6 months which lead to the new guys damaging vehicles when they went on solo Routes , not sure about the other locations but Orlando shows a lot of discrimination. If you looking to come work for this company I suggest you get your year of car hauling experience and move on,
ProsDecent pay, home daily, benefits
ConsUnder Maintain trucks, lack of good management, lower car hauling pay...
Either Work At Everyone's Pace, Or Work At Your Own, Because Everyone Isn't Going To Work At Your Pace.
A typical day, come in, sign in, check monitor for amount of cars and whether the delivery truck came or not, grab keys and do inventory, report damage, wash cars and fill with gas if needed and clean up and clock out when finished.
I learned how to wash cars, it's considered car detailing experience but I worked with a former car detailer, I don't think this job compares.
The managers nice, but I've worked here for 2 months and seen her 5 times and only talked to her 2 times. Originally agreed to work 2 days and discussed a 3rd, on my 1st day, gave me 3 days and discussed coming in a 4th for training, hounded me for a month about coming in for a 4th day after I was done with training, saying that was apart of the original agreement, knowing I have another job and was struggling working 3 days. Was faster to let me go than to come in or at least pick up the phone to discuss my problems or concerns.
Hardest Part - Understaffed, it's not the job of the advocates to help you and if you're working by yourself and have more than 8 cars, you will be working close to 12 hours. Most of the advocates will come help, but I've had days where no one came to help, but were quick to give critique or tell me I need to move faster when they were inside playing games on their computer or just talking, and everyone likes you to focus on different parts of the car; i.e. someone prefers extremely clean rims, another person says to go under the hood, another person says to vacuum twice and you
ProsGet to drive a variety of cars, wear whatever you want (within reason), regularly go out for team dinners or other type of events, mostly nice people to work with and nice building
ConsNo breaks, fast paced, understaffed, no place to wash cars when it's raining or hot outside, rarely see manager, advocates can be nit picky, schedule of when cars are supposed to be ready is unrealistic, can't have a full time job and work this job too
Training was adequate for the call center positions. Trainers are very nice.
Carvana has the virtual car selling part down pretty good, it's easy and fast for customers. Once the customer gets the vehicle, that's when the issues begin. A lot is being blamed on the COVID crisis and not enough is being done on the business side. I've seen people's registration go unworked for months and typically it used to be done in a 30 day period.
Asking the appropriate department about it just returns canned responses, a snarky reply, or unrelated information as if they didn't even read your question. Mentioned this to managers several times. , Currently they are so low staffed replies usually take 30 minutes. A lot of time I'd bring a problem to the attention of supervisors and get told the customer is essentially SOL. Several times I've had to escalate to a manager because it was obvious we bungled an issue up to actually get a problem solved for a customer. Often I sit at my desk asking myself why I even bother.
I think the low staffing is due to their bungling of scheduling during the start of COVID. They slashed everyone's hours in half and set up schedules that would change every once in a while. I think a lot of people quit during that time and especially after they restored people's hours to full, then down again the week after.
Ultimately decided to look for a new job after they made a side system to the shift bid. Previous it was all tenure and everyone got to look at the sa
You won’t break your back working here. The work is not difficult in a physical sense. The most challenging part of this job is making up for everyone else’s shortcomings. Don’t get me wrong, during my time here everyone you actually see and work with was tremendously hard working and personable, doing the best job they can. Carvana dove right into MA seemingly with no regard to how MA regulations differ from most of the rest of the country. Dealing with MA’s archaic policies and the RMV is downright exhausting and leads to you being put in hostile situations when you’re in front of someone and can’t deliver their car because their paperwork has some small error. (I heard someone once pulled a gun on one of my coworkers over a license plate issue) The team, in an office in Arizona, who’s supposed to catch this stuff, flubs all the time- and you’re the one putting out all the fires. Its seemingly because Carvana is doing TOO GOOD because it’s such a good idea, which is a tremendous problem to have in the interim but as the person who’s supposed to be proctoring these great experiences it can be very stressful exhausting and disheartening when you drive two hours to someone and can’t give them a car because someone else fumbled the paperwork. Not to mention this business has translated seemingly into the team that refurbishes the cars for retail as you’re constantly discovering right before you’re supposed to deliver a car that it’s unsafe for the road and needs repairs. When
ProsJob is fun, you’re not stuck in an office, make people happy, see all sorts of cars, allowed to purchase one wholesale car a year
ConsBUSY 10+hr days, relying on others, driving big truck in Boston, MA RMV is awful, office and lot undersized
Firstly and foremost, it’s practically impossible to get hired on directly through carvana. They use multiple temp agencies and they treat you 120% expendable. they hired roughly 200 people in their STC department for data entry... They’d mass hire 50 people a week and let more than half of them go if they couldn’t pass the live audit by the end of the week… (which day one you do nothing but tour and sit around with no direction scattered across the building with no supervisors in sight to lead you… day 2 is all tech support issues and trying to connect to programs and zoom conference calls… tons of us didn’t even have working headset so we had to use our phones… day 3 is a mixture of training and note taking… day 4 is a review then a test… day 5 is a live audit and if you don’t do everything perfectly or close enough to perfect to earn a retest you’re terminated.) although I passed, it was honestly some of the most sloppy training I’ve ever had. Your team leads start the same day or after you, and have no idea how to help you AT ALL. You’re misinformed the entire time you’re working for them. They train you in multiple departments and NEVER allow you to use the knowledge. They had me and 100 other people working off of something they called speedy sheet. It was supposed to generate (no lien) casework… but it generated no lien, lien, California cases… and towards the end it was only auto generating maybe 20 NEW workable no lien cases an hour. But they expected 100 people to d
ProsFree coffee
ConsUnreliable, dead end, favoritism
Questions And Answers about CARVANA
If you were in charge, what would you do to make CARVANA a better place to work?
Asked Nov 3, 2019
Pay the people once a week instead of every two weeks
What tips or advice would you give to someone interviewing at CARVANA?
Asked Feb 27, 2018
First off, I waited 30 minutes for my interview, they scheduled right at shift change. I felt that was unprofessional and I was getting ready to leave when they finally came in. Tour of facility and a lot of behavioral assessment questions.
Answered Oct 30, 2020
They’re the Amazon of the car world and after a few months in a field ops cust advocate position you’ll find they treat employees similarly, the flavor of the koolaid runs out quickly.
Answered Oct 17, 2020
What is the most stressful part about working at CARVANA?
Asked Oct 18, 2016
Always looking over your shoulder, there looking to fire you the minute you start working there, they even tell you in training and brag about it.
Answered Sep 16, 2020
Driving Manual cars and getting into ubers with strangers.
Answered Jan 11, 2020
How flexible are your working hours at CARVANA?
Asked May 22, 2020
Horrible you don’t have a set schedule or know when you’re getting off
Answered Jan 13, 2021
Not very flexible, all time off that is requested has to be pto, or it gets counted against you. Overtime is mandatory, always.
Answered Nov 9, 2020
What is a typical day like for you at CARVANA?
Asked May 6, 2020
Depends on if your in underwriting or inbound. Inbound calls are back to back. Different agents give different information. Underwriting you set your own pace
Answered Nov 18, 2020
It is chaotic, and full of fixing other employees lazy mistakes. Everything is overlooked by other people. “Carvana’s standards” are up to par with the shady used car dealer down the road, only difference is it’s online.
