tire technician

mot tester

vehicle technician

automotive technician

assistant manager

Halfords

The job provided me with important work experience in retail, and a wage through a majority of my recent education.

A typical day at work for me would be arriving on time and in uniform, badge correctly displayed, then essentially working to whatever desk I was assigned on the shop floor. A majority of the time this would be the till or the audio (sat nav) department, but occasionally would be the parts desk. In the latter half of my employment I was also part of the 'We Fit' service, and would go outside to customers' cars to fit headlights, wipers or batteries (by far my favourite job, even in the freezing cold; it was easily the most challenging work). The majority of work on the desks was basic salesmanship, or operating the till. We would be expected to sell products attached to KPIs etc., and to have good knowledge of the products offered. Nearing the end of your shift, one would be expected to 'face up' the store, if a low volume of customers allowed for it.

The job was quite accommodating for my requirements of being at university, but sometimes it would depend on the manager in question how much notice was required when time had to be booked off for important study-related occasions. The rule of thumb was to inform management as soon as you were able as to which days you needed off, and to ensure that it is in writing so that you have proof that you have done so.

Management was very hit-and-miss in my opinion, partially due to the rapid turnover rate of store managers at our store in particular. Each manager tended to have somewhat different expectations of the store and would put different systems in place, which had to be adapted to quickly. Some of the managers could not be faulted, but some were extremely unhelpful at times (i.e., refusing to get on the shop floor when they were required and leaving customers waiting). Occasionally managers were very pedantic, which was irritating when combined with the high turnover rate and different expectations.

Though talking on the shop floor was discouraged even if the store was empty, I maintain a good friendship with many of the co-workers (and some of the managers) at the store. Many of my fellows were in university as I was late in my employment, and some were as young as when I had first started. A mutual understanding of the store's operations and functions ensured that teamwork was always present and useful. The more popular managers were able to coordinate the team based on each person's strengths and assign desks more appropriately.

The hardest part of the job for me would be the occasionally 'dead' days, where customers were minimal and seldom actually there for a purchase. Facing up the store was the go to activity, which occasionally got strenuously dull, and when this was finished to an faultless standard, the day would consist of waiting patiently on your desk for something to happen. I much preferred to work with a little pressure, such as serving a number of customers, or the occasionally very challenging (depending on the car) changing of bulbs and batteries.

The most enjoyable part of the job was the sense of accomplishment after a truly happy customer leaves the store, or drives from the car park with everything on their car functioning again. Often I was praised on my service and timeliness when performing the We Fit service.

As a side note, I wondered whether the amount of specialist knowledge and skills required, particularly for the bike and parts desk, and for the child seat fitters, was perhaps a little demanding for minimum wage. There was technically no incentive (no higher pay grade) to receive training in these areas beyond the knowledge itself, and doing so would only make your job more challenging. I considered the skills I learned to be useful, but for those who didn't, it seemed like a flawed system.

A day in the Auto department will usually involve serving at the till, advising customers, booking in customer orders, picking web orders, handling DPD parcels, stocking shelves, changing price tickets, fitting items to vehicles; bulbs batteries etc and when quiet facing up and tidying.

Management is a hit and miss. In my time at the company there have been three managers which all have different ethics and methods. The current manager is fair and competent however previous managers have lied to me regarding holiday requests and have put me down for overtime which has not been agreed to but expected to be worked regardless.

Customers
Most are nice and pleasant to chat to, some have genuine interests in vehicles. However some are very rude and you must have a very tolerant attitude toward them. Some will put in fake complaints so that managers offer them a discount or items/services for free. 

Managers will often bend over back words in order to avoid customer concerns/complaints even when we are not at fault in any way.

Fitting
Regardless of the weather rain, shine, freezing, blazing you'll be out fitting which is personally my favourite task. You'll be expected to complete (very) basic training on how to fit items such as batteries, bulbs, wipers to cars/vans. Expect to have customers watching you fit items (personally never bothered me) to their vehicles. You will often have filthy arms from reaching into engine compartments or through wheel arches.

The training is very basic and will not cover all vehicles or scenarios; most knowledge comes from other store colleagues. If you're ever in doubt ask a colleague as some light clusters are very fragile/brittle (especially in the freezing weather)

Workload
You have a lot of responsibilities and expectations for a relatively low wage job. Stores are often understaffed and customers are often very impatient. Sometimes customer orders are not booked in due to under staffing.

Team/Other colleagues
All colleagues I've worked with are/have been great. I've made a few friends that I still keep in touch with since they've left the company. If you are ever unsure of anything in the store ask them for help they usually very friendly.

Job advancement
You can progress to be a tech fitter and fit things such as stereos, dash cams and hands free kits although the pay increase is only very slight and inadequate. However the training is excellent.

You can apply to become a manager via the aspire program however it is very stressful and again underpaid as you do not receive any pay increase until you are fully trained (though you will be expected to carry out managers duties and workload during the training with very little help)

Uniform
You are supplied with a branded t-shirt and jacket. Fitters share hi-vis clothing which is often gross at times. PPE such as gloves are personally assigned to you.

A personal opinion of mine (Repetitive)
A pet hate of mine was the radio playing the same songs over and over day after day. Most vehicles you fit on will be common such as Corsas and you will eventually get bored of these. (However customers are usually nice to talk to)

I initially joined the company just over a year ago as a cycle technician. I felt I was paid relatively well and enjoyed my job, there were aspects of it I didn’t like for sure, but overall it was genuinely a great place to work. In some ways it still is, when you’re out doing fits or building bikes it’s actually fun and engaging and challenges you to find solutions to any problem. 
However as of late, on a company wide level, decisions have been made that are just completely tone deaf and dismissive of both customers and employees. It is a company driven entirely by greed and will milk you for every ounce of your labour and energy and give nothing in return, other than what I now realise is a relatively normal pay rate. On top of all that, arbitrary unrealistic sales targets are set and stores that don’t meet them have hours and staff cut, but targets aren’t adjusted to reflect this. Management will often have fantastic personal figures because they serve very few customers on a weekly basis, and jobs that would lead to a drop in their figures or would make their figures look realistically bad, are then delegated to other staff so their personal figures take the hit instead. On till for example you average 2-300 customers a week while managers often close a week with 20-50 transactions on a busy week.  
On a store level, while I wasn’t particularly affected being able to do most of everything, the majority of new starters and younger staff and females do not get give the opportunity to learn anything and are just brought in so upper management don’t have to go on the tills. Then as these newer and less experienced people never get the opportunity to learn they get further shafted as management believes them to not be good enough. It’s an uncomfortably vicious circle. 
The shifts are also a mess as Rotas are planned around what is convenient for the two main store managers, not anyone else, so you will often work shifts with unreasonable hours or number of staff because one of the other managers wanted a nicer shift. 
It’s a tough one because the people are lovey as individuals, however when it becomes work related, it becomes rather unpleasant to work there. 

I would honestly never encourage someone to work here. The job is fun, but the company is very greedy and care very little about their staff. For every small reward you get and thank you letter, the company creates another unrealistic sales target, set by people who seem to have never spent more than a day on the shop floor.

Worked for multiple years, the company is incredibly going down hill only caring out the company never taking into consideration the employees nor the customers perception of halfords and the employees acting as the face of the company. The company acts as if the employees are magic, and can pursuade customers to just give their money and details as if its nothing, and blame the employees for customers decisions. 

I have personally been requiring an increase in hours over the last year and a half and been promised the hours multiple times. Still have had no change to my timetable and when i wanted to leave due to financial problems i got pushed to do everything, no one else did any fittings because the other colleagues directed the customer in my direction. 
Not to mention i need more hours on my contract before i can even think about getting anymore supplements which makes advancing in this shop a difficult task, meaning dedicating my life, first born child, and soul to make working here actually worth it.

For a job we put ourselves in terrible weather fitting car parts for customers, who act as if you're daft for asking them if theyre fitting it in those weather conditions, that i can deal with as its occupational hazards, its the policy of i cant accept tips because we're a "professional" job. If halfords is professional, you wouldnt be getting paid minimum wage/+60p depending on enhancements. Again; not a professional wage. I can deal with not accepting tips, in the situation of a customer coming into the store due to an emergency and stress and needing to get on the road to go half away cross the country, or even if i had enough pay to make the job seem worth it. We charge the customer more to fit a bulb than an hours pay for most colleagues.

Not to mention the recently updated cycle care plans are non renuable anymore; upsetting a lot of regulars who have now changed their trusted professionals to look after their bike since we're not prepared to assist them past the end of their cycle care/care plan. 

There are more call centres than necessary, customer call them and all they do is direct them to an instore colleague or provide them with incredibly wrong information which has to be emended by colleagues in store who end up getting in the neck.
Just cut out the middle man and the top man and the company would run 300% smoother

The wesbite is beyond poor. Typing in one thing will bring about a completely unrelated product and provide the customer with incorrect delivery information and doesnt take into consideration build times for bike or booking in fits required for radio and dashcams (granted they are trying to improve, but its just getting worse)... The website was built by monkeys 

The company is all about money money money 

Ignore anything mentioned by halfords including customer service or when they say they care for the employees; because theyre lying out their backside.

Let me start by saying the work that you'll do at Halfords is really enjoyable if you like working with your hands. I've worked in both car audio and Bikehut and thoroughly enjoy my work. This one positive to Halfords however is overshadowed by a monumental failure of leadership at every level. Specialists (glorified supervisors) are hired out of desperation and usually don't know what they're doing and instead of relieving pressure, simply get in the way. Managers are so pressurised to achieve unattainable figures (there are more KPIs than I can count) in all aspects of the store, ranging from how many bulbs, blades and batteries are fitted, how much "slime" is put in bike tyres, number of cyclecares, number of bike accessories with each sale and the value of these accessories, percentage of sales made in which the salesperson has received a customer's email, etc, etc. They have recently introduced their "motoring club" which is now also tracked and anybody not meeting their "quota" is reprimanded. They operate an "SSR" system which is their feedback system. There are periodic rewards for varying numbers of positive SSRs per person (50, 100, 150 etc), but a transaction is required to be able to leave feedback, meaning the staff at the tills - usually students - have huge opportunity to receive large amounts of positive feedback meanwhile the tech guys who are actually putting the products they sell together get nothing. 

Getting time off is a chore, partly because managers just don't respect work/life balance, but primarily because the company has made huge cutbacks in wage spending meaning nearly every store and garage is immensely understaffed. You will be expected to cover this deficit by doing huge amounts of overtime, though.

This is without mentioning that in their recent restructure during covid - "operation falcon" - they sacked all of their assistant managers and offered some of them the opportunity to reapply for the exact same job renamed to "deputy manager" for less money. Their claims that they "repositioned staff where and when they can" was an outright lie. This was during the 2020-2021 period where they made over £90 million in profit AFTER tax. They are projecting to make around £75 million this year and have made a huge deal about their reduced profits ever since this projection so expect more reductions in spending. Be  cautious of this if you're applying for one of their new roles - particularly the Specialist (supervisor) role - as these will probably be the first to go given that most of them are poorly trained and are still under probation.

Now I know Halfords to be a great store as a consumer and have always had faith since my firend and other's have had jobs there for many years but the way the quality of management for this particular store was just not good at all; 

I just felt like my assigned work shift was actually a hindrance to people and felt heavily ill equipped to do the role since my training consisted of a few very short videos explaining certain things with no kind of test or practical application what-so-ever. 

Then I was told I would be building bikes with no previous experience for kids bikes, which thankfully I was actually fine to do but when it comes to the complicated things such as brakes, gears or anything of that nature that just required a bit of instruction I found it very difficult to do my job under the pressure of the Christmas period which in itself was a challenge anyway.

I took this all on the chin though as I believed they would provide me training of which i requested several times. I eventually had a slot booked and was quite happy/relieved that I could finally do my job properly without feeling like an idiot.. 

However, my newly assigned manager who was never in charge of the bike hut let alone worked there phoned me up in the late hours of the evening at 9pm to say that my training had been moved to Cribbs Causeway from the original location (Bideford?) of which I replied 'Great, Thanks for telling me' to only get there the next morning and have the Cribbs store tell me that there is no training happening here and that it's still all on the go at the orignal location with my colleague being marked as present but not me.... What a ........

Seriously, if that was not enough my pay was heavily taxed for no reason even after giving them all the correct forms which should have not put me on the temp tax code and felt like 2 months before i got paid as they neglected to add me into the payment system and the rota, plus they would only ever give me 9 Hours.

The work was brilliant however and i felt like i could accel there very well due to the way the orders are placed and maintenance done gave me alot of new skills to hone. 

Would recommend Halfords, but not this particular store unless they've changed their act.

Day to day tasks could be incredibly stressful and challenging, especially when you aren’t supported the way you should be. Most of the people I met were amazing and I’ll gladly say that some of those amazing people will be my friends for life,  however the people that are bad are horrendous, some of which have the biggest egos I’ve ever experienced and their way of dealing with people and managing challenging situations can be (A) unpleasant and less than helpful (B) depressing at best. 

A lot of the store managers are fantastic and genuinely want you to be happy, however the stress sometimes may feel like it could kill you. The others have some kind of seniority complex that can be frankly concerning. The senior leadership teams can be very cruel and judgmental, and prefer to promote externally rather than give people a chance and a platform to succeed, which definitely goes against being “one Halfords family”.

Pay is mediocre, not appalling but hardly what you may call good, you definitely work yourself into the ground for what you get. There is no bonus structure really until you go into management, and the structure is very heavily weighted against you make no mistake. The whole thesis of “sell, sell, sell” is also a bit soul crushing, I get it, it’s retail but sometimes it’s a bit much having in total literally 90 odd KPIs in total all of which will determine how much you’re valued overall.

Progression is possible if you have the right manager but can be tediously slow, all the while you’re told to remain optimistic and be positive. I held just about every role in retail up until management, I had a store then had it ripped away once someone above me had decided that I’d had my five minutes in the sun. Then when handing in my notice upper management tell me how much I’m appreciated and that they’ll in essence pay to keep me, but still not for what I’m worth and I still probably won’t be happy.

It’s not all bad though. Some of the people are amazing and when you all get along the trauma bonding can be kind of fun as you’re all in it together, but the bad apples can be bloody sour. 

I have worked for halfords for many years and the amount of change is insane particularly recently when they restructured the whole company and made a lot of people/roles redundant. Halfords is a pressure cooker when it comes to hitting targets that seem quite pointless. Always upping percentages and bringing in new things for you to push and be monitored on or you get pushed out of the business.
Management are getting younger and younger but seem to have a completely different attitude In general. No empathy, treat people like robots, no personality etc.
There has been a very high staff turnover In my current store. I have worked there for 2 years and 22 people have been and gone In that time. 
After the recent business restructure and redundancies, we are at our lowest headcount ever even having to shut early/open late sometimes because we are totally unable to run the store on the number of people we have in and when we can't do that, for his few that are there, it is extremely stressful and busy.
The facilities including the tills, Internet, tablets etc are poor and always have issues requiring replacements/maintenance work. 
Air con is always broken in the summer and heating is always broken in the winter. Takes forever for them to get anyone out to fix it so we're either sweltering or freezing all year round. 
The lift broke once and nobody was sent to fix it for months causing big issues. Several engineers came out and didn't have parts or didn't know what they were doing. 10 months later it finally got fixed.

Every day there is a new stress. Lots of pressure. Push harder, pester people for more details, don't let them say no, put prices up all the time, lunch breaks cut short or non existent, shifts changed with no mention, belittled, ignored, worked extremely hard, EXPECTED to do overtime like we don't have families or social lives and with no extra pay and after recently being off with covid, received NO support, no welfare checks, no nothing. Completely going down the toilet

Personally I love to be fast paced and have challenges from day to day the main issue with Halfords the more you learn and the more you can do the worst you are, the reasons why is because knowledge is power but the knowledge also makes the team members slack around you so whilst your run of your feet serving 7 to 8 customers at a time the others are sat out the back drinking coffee slagging others off, it's each man to there self's, they class Halfords as a friendly place to work with no stress and a flexible work to family life nope its all the opposite, you have no family time and trust me you live in your uniform in and out of work even unsociable hours just in case the alarm goes off, training is very poor all done via computer unattended and you learn nothing from it, going up in ranks its not what you know it's who you know and if your a brown noser then your spot on and will be liked but slagged of behind your back, management will take all the school times off so if you've got kids don't ever think you will get time off whilst kids are of school because it don't happen, the only joys about the job is the customers the other downsides are taking all there personal details for company gains and if you don't get this info your shouted at saying why not, would I say I learnt owt from Halfords yes but of my own back, don't believe the insentives either you've got to do akot as a team but there's always 1 what let's you down so you graft hard hit all the numbers withing 3 months and 1 man let's you down loosing all the pot bonus and what you do bank won't go in your wage it's set for the same curry house at Xmas, sick pay your ment to get it but nope they pull that of people aswell if your genuine sick ie operations etc so your without money and if you say no for any reason for over time you won't be ever offered again, working for the company so many years I enjoyed it but these past few years have just gone down hill hence why I just walked out without warning 

Understaffed and overworked. I was intially placed on a 20hr part time contract but within a month of working there found myself scheduled for up to 50, 6-7 days/week. Allocated holiday is a good amount but getting requests accepted is like getting water from ghandi's sandle- and have to be made 4 weeks in advance.

Extremely target driven work that is often hard to achieve, and management never seem to give much slack. Their 'training' works for some as you're thrown in at the deep end and just expected to 'learn by doing'. Alot of the time this training falls on other staff who dont have the time. 

Don't apply if you get sick more than 3 times a year- because you'll get a written report and investigation if you do.

Technically and practically, a very simple job to learn and preform. Press a few buttons at the till and fit a few batteries. The draining bit is the uncompromising never ending demands of  hours and jobs and favours way past the pay grade. You're expected to do things 'as a gesture of good will' to support your 'one halfords family.' and if not- youre a bad team member.

Aside from that- the connections between a lot of the colleagues are great and I have made alot of great friends there through mutual despise of the job. No one enjoys working there but we all enjoy each others company for the most part- excluding the typical few with power-fed egos.

You get nice reasonably lengthy lunches if you work longer shifts and smoke breaks when needed without question. Store cleaners are great and have a repour with the staff. And alot of the time, products are decent quality and easy to promote and sell.

Im sure there's other positives but thinking of them is hard when the whole experience is  just so negative.

Only apply if you've got the guts to stick out long long hours in a repetitive customer service job with little hope of promotions.

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