Working at the Car Wash: Tommy’s College Internship Program

With the excitement of our rapid growth trajectory and continual pursuit to enrich lives, add value, and serve communities, 2021 was the perfect year to kick off Tommy’s Internship Program. This 12-week experience provides students with real projects associated with their field of study outside the classroom setting. Interns learn business objectives, experience mentorship, and receive evaluation throughout the program. Our mission with this program is to grow talent and to identify high-potential talent to become the future leaders of our organization. Each intern is assigned to a mentor they work with for the summer—significant developmental benefits for both interns and the organization result from the collaborative structure of this program.

From their first day with the organization, interns are introduced to the company’s mission, vision, values, culture, organizational structure, and resources available to them. Their first week includes attending a Corporate Orientation Session tailored to their program. They learn their core objectives, the program’s organization, and receive further introduction to the company’s history and culture. Outside of the continued project work and support from their mentor and team, the program also includes monthly Lunch N’ Learn Professional Development Training. Interns are introduced to various department leaders in a lunch setting followed by training sessions led by the Human Resources team. Training topics include DISC Personality Profile, preparing a resume, preparing for an interview, and presentation skills.

The final day of the internship consists of an Exposition where interns present the results of their projects and summarize the lasting contribution to the organization’s goals. The Exposition is vital exposure for our teams to learn about the projects and developments throughout the organization. Team members organization-wide were impressed with project outcomes, appreciated the added value to business objectives, and witnessed the interns’ successes throughout the summer.

Tommy’s 2021 Summer Internship Program welcomed four interns. The Franchise Development Intern created Opportunity Maps for Franchise Partners with MUDAs (territories) and worked within mapping software to identify top-performing retail chains in the country. These tools created by the intern will continue to be further developed by the Franchise Development team to be used with both current and future Franchise Partners.

Providing visibility to the Tommy University Content Creation Process Flow was the responsibility of the Learning and Development Intern. This project walked teams through the process of taking training requests and implementing them into digestible course content to be administered for world-class training nationwide. The intern had the opportunity to create new lessons as the team continually adds new resources to better equip all our Tommy Teams for top performance.

The Pre-Construction Project Management Intern identified a Contractor Scope Matrix, completed Drawing Reviews, and further improved City Approval documentation. Through this project, teams learned how various building materials are used and outlined in drawings during the pre-construction process for a new site. Insight was also provided on the process for the Project Management team working with both Franchise Partners and General Contractors through the construction process of a site.

The primary project for the Mechanical Engineering Intern was developing a Wash Controller Simulator. This involved the creation of a light board that pictorially represented Tommy’s standard wash tunnel. The lights represented functions and features in the wash that the Controls team will wire to a car wash controller to train new team members and test program changes more efficiently in the future. Having previous wash knowledge from working at our Hudsonville, MI Tommy’s Express location, this intern was hands-on with projects immediately. It was evident that his passions for both the company and engineering provided a remarkable opportunity for a project that will continue to benefit our internal teams well beyond the internship.

As an organization, we are thankful for the success of the program’s debut and are looking forward to growing the program in the years to come. We value equipping both interns and our teams for the future and see the internship program as a stepping stone to the achievement on both fronts.

Stay tuned to learn more about the 2022 Summer Internship Program and find other available opportunities here: TCWS | Careers (tommycarwash.com)