How GM and Ford fight Silicon Valley, and each other, for intern talent

Jamie L. LaReau | Detroit Free Press

University of California, Berkeley student Ryan Cosner could be earning a hefty paycheck working at a trendy California technology company this summer, but he chose to come to Dearborn for an internship at Ford Motor Co. instead.

Cosner, 21, is not interested in Silicon Valley despite his emphasis in studying mechanical engineering and technology. He, and many college students like him, prefer to take a spin with a car company.

"One of my good friends, he's an electrical engineer, he's never turned a wrench in his life, but he loves the idea of autonomous vehicles," Cosner said. "I grew up working on cars, I am interested in AVs too. I am kind of a gearhead and he's a tech whiz, but we're both landing in the same spot on AV."

Cosner's pal, a fellow Berkeley student, interned at General Motors last summer.GM and Ford are increasingly recruiting student interns from top schools with the hope of hiring many of them when they graduate. Both companies are attracting interns from distinguished universities more than they used to, in part because of their push into technology with electric vehicles and AVs, areas Fiat Chrysler has not pursued.

Both companies have sharpened their skills in courting college students, in what's become an acute competition against each other and Silicon Valley firms for top talent.

"It used to be, we'd do everything just to fill in those slots," said Michael Arena, GM's chief talent officer. "But our reputation has changed and our relationships on campus have improved. We know we're getting the top of the top at every university now."

Here's a look at how Ford and GM use internships to give students work that tests their mettle with the ultimate goal of hiring the best.

GM's repositioning

Five years ago, GM struggled to scrap together 400 interns and co-op students each summer. Many of those it did attract hailed from unrenowned schools.

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Fast forward to last fall. Nearly 11,000 students applied to GM from universities all over the country, including Ivy League schools, for a chance to intern in Detroit for the summer. They endured a grueling interview process to win one of only 620 openings.

Take Caroline Wade, 21, a senior at Duke University interning in finance at GM's Technology Center in Warren this summer. She submitted her resume to GM last fall. She did several interviews before GM assigned her a hypothetical case study. She had to build a financial model and run analysis on it, then make a recommendation on a solution. If she passed it, she would get an offer to intern at GM, she said.

"I had to wait a week and I sweated it out a little bit," Wade said.

Then, she got a call from a GM representative. "He said, 'Carly, I have great news.' I was in the cafeteria at Duke and I got so excited."

Most GM interns will get full-time offers for employment at the end of their 10- to 12-week internship, said Arena, who declined to provide exact figures.

Wade is sweating it out again, hoping on her final day in her internship, Aug. 3, she will get a full-time job offer.

"That would be my dream job," Wade said.

Every 26 minutes

The wages GM pays its interns and co-ops is $20 to $33 an hour, but it's a far cry from Silicon Valley companies that typically pay $40 to $45 an hour, students say. Ford leaders declined to say what it pays interns, but GM and Ford both pay for out-of-state interns' housing.

The internship programs are an important feeder for the two companies to fill in permanent, full-time hires. In fact, every 26 minutes GM hires a full-time employee from the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, said GM's 2017 Sustainability Report.

GM's hiring success lies in its 2013 decision to reduce the number of "strategic campuses" where it recruited to 18 from 30. Fewer schools allows GM to focus its efforts and build stronger relationships on campus, Arena said.

"Every year there is a team of GM employees assigned to the core schools, led by an executive," Arena said. "It's where we form deep relationships with professors and the deans, so we can build a network that continues to produce."

Arena said GM is competing for talent against Ford, Apple and Google, to name a few. So GM uses its work on EV and AV technology to position itself as a tech company on campuses, he said.

"That means we go away from the Midwest to some extent and towards the coasts," Arena said. "More than half of our overall employees come from outside Michigan. More and more, that's coming from the coast. It used to be we hired from Michigan and that's it."

Many of GM's interns now come from such prestigious schools as Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Harvard University, Duke University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Michigan and Michigan State, Arena said.

Ford's feeder pool

Ford had about 580 interns this summer, most doing a 12-week internship. The number of interns Ford hires has remained stable over the past five years, said Lena Allison, Ford's manager of U.S. Talent Acquisition.

But, like GM, Ford is more efficient at finding top interns. It's better at articulating Ford's mission and it promotes the idea of an internship as a segue to a permanent job, said Allison, who was a Ford intern herself 27 years ago.

"They understand that they're not here for the short term," said Allison. "They know we're very interested in them, we give them meaty assignments. They're not here to just get coffee, so to speak."

Allison declined to say how many of Ford's summer interns it typically hires, but characterized it as "a very high number." About half of Ford's interns come from out-of-state universities, and Ford has increasingly looked at such schools as Stanford, Berkeley, MIT and the University of Notre Dame.

Allison said the company studies data to determine the schools from which it has historically best recruited talented people with high-level skills to match its jobs, she said.

"We also have a big social media campaign," said Allison. "We reach out to candidates ... and we use our interns and new employees to help us with videos. They say why they like Ford and the things they've done here."

To compete with tech companies and other automakers, Ford strives to be seen as "the most trusted mobility company in the world," Allison said.

That image resonated with 20-year-old Brian Blankenship, who will be a senior at Berkeley this fall. He turned down lucrative offers from tech companies willing to pay "upwards of $40 an hour, which is just crazy," he said. Instead, Blankenship, a mechanical engineering and computer science major, is interning in Ford's sustainability, environment and safety engineering department.

"When I was interviewing, Ford kept talking about the ethics of the company, which I didn't hear from the tech companies," Blankenship said. "Ford was focused on ethical business practices rather than alluring me with salary."

Better work space

GM redesigned its work spaces at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, its tech center in Warren and its proving grounds in Milford in recent years. Ford recently bought the Michigan Central Station in Detroit's hip Corktown neighborhood that it plans to renovate and turn into its AV/EV campus. It is also in the process of transforming its Dearborn offices. The companies want to offer young people a collaborative, open space rather than a block of cubicle walls. Most interns embrace the environment.

"I'm in the open concept space, with big long tables and monitors that you can hook your screens up to," GM's Caroline Wade said. "It's really cool. By the end of my first day, I knew everyone."

Parker Strong, 23, is a senior at Brigham Young University who interns at GM's Detroit headquarters in marketing. He had offers from five different companies, all outside of automotive. He chose GM because he'd have access to executives for networking, be treated like an employee and given tough assignments. Then, there are the trucks.

"When I walked through the doors of the Renaissance Center, I was blown away. They were having truck month and to see all the models was so cool," Strong said. "I love trucks."

Cosner works at Ford's product development group testing electrical systems. There, it's still conservative compared to the San Francisco tech company where his friend interns, where free lunch is provided and there is table tennis for stress relief.

"There are no Ping Pong tables" here, Cosner joked. "I work in cube city and they just implemented having free coffee. It's more of a traditional company, but I like that. It feels more disciplined."

Word of mouth

Word of mouth and personal experience also continue to fuel the recruitment process at both companies. For example, GM tells potential interns that CEO Mary Barra was a co-op worker 30 years ago in a GM manufacturing plant as an engineer. Likewise, GM's product boss Mark Reuss started off as a GM intern.

In fact, Barra sometimes helps recruit. Caroline Wade and a group of Duke students visited GM last year as part of a recruitment effort.

"At the end, Mary Barra took 10 minutes out of her day to talk to us," Wade said. "I wanted to do management consulting and thought I'd apply to other companies, but after my field trip to GM, I put all my eggs in one basket. I was so excited to work there."

Georgia Tech senior Derin Ozturk, 21, said conversations with other Georgia Tech students who did internships at GM convinced him to choose GM over two other companies.

"They worked with cool vehicles and had a hands-on experience," said Ozturk, who works at GM's Tech Center in Warren on autonomous vehicles. He is staying in a Sterling Heights apartment paid for by GM.

Ozturk is majoring in computer engineering. When he first arrived at GM in May, he wasn't sure what industry he wanted to pursue with this degree after he graduates this fall. Now he knows.

"After coming to GM and seeing this take off with AV, it occurred to me that AV will be a revolution that changes how people get around, it'll change the landscape," said Ozturk. "I want to be a part of it."

Contract Jamie L. LaReau at jlareau@freepress.com or 313-222-2149