Making great hires is essential for today’s painting contractor. A well-designed internship program can help you find the best talent and fuel productivity and growth.

Alpine Painting and Sandblasting is one company taking full advantage of the intern potential. Dave Scaturro is Vice President and Director of Commercial Estimating of the Paterson, N.J.-based company. Working himself as an intern in college, he saw firsthand the value and new ideas they could offer. Now, he’s leading an internship program to find the best new talent for the family painting business.

“What we do is reach out to the local universities and we acquire students who are looking to get real life experience in what they do in their fields,” Scaturro says. “We incorporate everything from project management, to estimating, accounting, marketing and we bring students in typically their third or fourth year and we give them an opportunity to shine.”

A different outlook

Interns like this offer different perspectives than what they would typically get from the work force, he says.

“They really look at our company through a new lens.”

Working with the career development programs at local universities, Alpine Painting has developed a structured system to find quality interns. The best candidates turn into full-time employees.

This article was originally published in the Spring 2019 issue of PPC magazine. Story by Mike Starling, PPC Editor. Read more about what pro painters have discovered on the job in the PPC What I’ve Learned archive.