Hilti Group reviews

Like any company Hilti has its fair share of challenges and issues. It is very heavily process orientated, almost to the point of being blind to common sense. Account managers are treated like robots, with little autonomy to exercise their own creativity or judgement. There are too many boxes to tick and not necessarily boxes that will directly contribute to sales and profitability target achievement. You almost need to tick these just for the sake of it so that any reports management run on you show up with as much 'green' as possible. Too much of your evaluation is based on cold numbers rather than an understanding of the story behind the numbers, or the overall value you bring to the company. There is a lot of politics and being 'in' with the right managers and directors will help your career progress. Also, being seen to be doing the right things can be more important than actually delivering any real value. Too often people are promoted for these reasons and do not necessarily have the right balance of experience, knowledge and soft skills. This only later becomes apparent when the damage has been done and valuable experienced people start to leave in numbers. The level of overall experience within the company is falling. There is now an imbalance with too many people without the necessary industry or functional experience. As a consequence people are being promoted to managers prematurely while still lacking basic functional and industry knowledge, resulting in a 'blind leading the blind' situation.

A very repetitive role. The job has become less and less about selling and more about ticking the boxes. Even though you know what your doing isn't effective you're still obliged to follow a the same route month in month out to tick a certain box. The company does not listen to its customers and innovates and produces what it wants and not what the customer needs. prices are sometimes way too high (consumables) with very high profit margins. Scaring away many customers. I think the company still hasn't decided if they want to be niche or target the mass market. Managers are incompetent in their roles as the wrong people are promoted for the wrong roles eg. If you hit your sales targets no matter your soft skills you'll be promoted to a manager. Every AM is enticed with the 'carrot' of a promotion. 300 AM's are fighting for a handful of jobs which is given out to suck ups or good sales people. Not the individuals who have a balance of soft skills/qualifications & results. To be good at the role and tick all the boxes they want you to tick you need to work at least 12 hour days. A very manic role. sometimes working very early to very late.