Automotive News - October 21, 2013 - Supplement - S41

OCTOBER 21, 2013 ❙ 41

PA R K P L A C E D E A L E R S H I P S , D A L L A S

Dallas group lures talented interns
to tackle challenges in real world
Printed in Automotive News July 29, 2013
Gabe Nelson
gnelson@crain.com

or many college students, a summer
job in the car business might mean
washing vehicles or greeting customers.
Not at Park Place Dealerships.
The Dallas-based dealership group offers
paid summer internships to accounting,
marketing and information technology majors, along with the usual car fanatics. It has
proved to be a potent recruiting tool, helping
the 16-store group find talented young employees who might otherwise shy away from
working at a car dealership.
Now in its third summer, the internship
program has a lower acceptance rate than an Ivy
League university. This
year, Park Place doubled
the size of the program
and still had to turn away
95 percent of applicants,
with 600 students vying
for 32 spots.
Cloud: Ex-intern
"It is creating a candiwas hired as an date pool that we wouldn't
accountant.
have otherwise had," Kurtis Vanous, the group's human resources brand manager, said.
Park Place, which sells luxury brands such
as Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and Porsche, has
hired eight of the 32 students who worked as
interns the past two summers.
Others have yet to graduate. Vanous said
the company's ultimate goal is to hire half of
its interns once they are ready for a full-time
job.
Guy Davis, assistant director of the career
center at Southern Methodist University,
said Park Place has shaped job duties to ensure its interns learn something of value. Big
corporations with national internship programs tend to think about that, he said, but
local businesses sometimes overlook it.
Park Place also pays interns $12 to $15 an
hour in an era when many college students
must resort to unpaid internships to get a
foot in the door.
About half of the dealership group's in-

This summer's interns at Park Place Dealerships gather with Stephen Rand, left, director of
service operations at Park Place Motorcars Grapevine, and Kurtis Vanous, the group's human
resources brand manager, right. The dealership's internship program is in its third summer.
terns get college credit as well.
It all adds up to a rewarding program,
Davis said.
"Being paid is part of it," he said. "But
along with being paid, you need to have
meaningful, real-world work. And that's
what Park Place gives our students."
To lure ambitious students, Park Place offers more responsibilities than college-age
employees typically get.
One intern has been tasked with developing an iPad-based delivery system for sales of
Sprinter commercial vans, which are sold by
Mercedes-Benz. Another intern oversees the
loaner-car office at a Mercedes store, making
sure the 185-car fleet is fueled, clean and free
of damage every day.
A benefit of the program is seeing whether
the interns are a good fit for the company. It
helps the dealership group make fewer hiring mistakes and spend less money on training for employees who do not work out.
Without the internship program, Park
Place may have been unable to hire
Stephanie Cloud, 22, who worked as an intern last summer and started last month as a

full-time staff accountant at the group's corporate headquarters in Dallas.
Cloud, a native of suburban Dallas who
graduated with an accounting degree this
year from a liberal arts college in Arkansas,
was used to working summer jobs with no
long-term prospects.
One summer she worked at a bank and
spent most of her time scanning documents
rather than using the skills she was developing as an accounting major. She also had
worked as a secretary and kept score for basketball games at a local recreation center.
"I needed an internship that wouldn't just
last the summer," Cloud said. "I wanted it to
be the key to getting a job in the future."
Cloud was surprised to learn Park Place
would hire her for the summer. She expected
that only big accounting and consulting
firms wanted interns in her field.
Once she arrived, she was impressed by the
ambition of the group's employees.
"It's so different from anyplace else I've
ever worked," Cloud said. "They have really
high standards, and it seems like everyone is
always above those standards." c

Automotive News - October 21, 2013 - Supplement

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