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Public Accounting Casting Call – Summer Intern Edition!

Posted on by Daniel Braddock

Summer interns are en route to an office near you; either already on board or on their way this week, sporting their early summer tans. Just in time for the work load to shrivel up to next to nothing and summer hours to be instituted – gotta love the timing! But nonetheless summer intern season is a wonderful time of year, and I want to make sure GC helps celebrate the summer.

Today’s post is a cry for help on two different levels (has my job really come to the point of groveling?). Here’s the scoop:


Summer Interns

What’s the concept?: The main drive behind this blog is to provide insider information on the public accounting industry to those who work in the trenches every day. What better way to do that than by listening to you, the summer intern? Your senior manager might ignore you all summer, but we won’t.

What we’re looking for: Summer interns at public accounting firms (Big 4, mid-size, anyone is welcome) to contribute short, bi-weekly write-ups about your summer experiences. We’re not looking for firm bashing information or juicy details about co-ed hookups but hey, if you have dirt, we’re always here to listen. Write-ups should touch on your experiences, both firm related on your respective engagement teams.

How to get involved: Email me here and include the following information:
Name:
Firm and Location:
Dates of internship:
Best email to contact you on:
*See my note below about confidentiality

Advice for Summer Interns

What’s the concept?: I’m in the process of putting together a “guide” for summer interns. What do they need to know before starting at your firm? What industries should they avoid or gravitate towards? How should they handle being snagged into a drunken conversation with a partner about his three kids and pending soccer tournament? Most of you here have not only worked with/ hated on interns before, but you were one at one point in your career as well.

What we’re looking for: Share your advice or your stories of interns past. The dirt. Everything. From serious career advice to informal tongue-in-cheek statements, nothing is off limits.

How to get involved: Email me feedback and include your firm’s name and office location. Feel free to leave stories below in the comments.

*Please note: As a member of the public accounting industry myself I understand the importance of confidentiality when it comes to something like this project, and I understand the concern that I might release names either publicly or to the respective firms. Simply put, I will never do such a thing. The success of this website rises and falls with the trust of our readers. No one would ever take action to hurt our relationship with you, the readers. Please have faith in us as I ask for your participation. Any feedback or comments are assumed to be private.

That said, I look forward to your feedback. Cheers and Happy Moanday.

Related Posts

Will a Fear of Flying Be a Problem for a Future Big 4 Auditor?

Happy MOANday, people. I received the following email last week and wanted to share my response with all of you. Please comment below if you are or have ever been in a similar situation, and detail how your respective firm responded.

I have a question that I can’t seem to have answered anywhere. I just finished my sophomore year a prestigious university in the northeast and am considered working at Big 4 for a few years for the resume stamp so I could transfer for better pay/work-life balance. One thing that interests me is how much traveling is required in the audit department if you work in a big city like NYC…are most of the client sites local or will a lot of flying be involved. The reason I ask is because I have an intense fear of flying and I am wondering if this will be a deal breaker. I would be more than happy to DRIVE anywhere or take Amtrak but I seriously do not want to fly. Would working for Big 4 in NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc give me the flexibility that I seek in terms of flying, or should I be considering another career? Thanks for your time!


The easy answer: Talk to the recruiters that visit campus. I don’t know how hard you’ve looked for an answer but the recruiters are campus know (or should know) their firm’s HR policies well enough to answer the question.

The must-give-Caleb-400-words-of-content answer: Generally speaking, intensive travel is generally affiliated with large corporations with resources in several states or countries; more times than not these businesses are headquartered in the larger cities you mentioned. For example: it is entirely possible to work on a large multinational corporation based in New York City that has factories in several states. Depending on the scope of the audit and the resources of firm, staff auditors occasionally have to travel to the remote sites and perform fieldwork. Most auditors welcome the travel as “part of the job” and enjoy a change in working environment (even if the environment is a chemical plant in Arizona). But because of your legitimate fear, this is obviously not something you’re interested in. I wouldn’t worry, and here’s why:

The advantage to working in a larger office is that the Scheduling team can better accommodate your request not to be assigned to engagements where air travel would be required. However, that’s not to say that should your office location be a smaller office (say, Pittsburgh), your request would be met with a “too bad for you” response. It is in the best interest of the firm to handle needs like yours in a professional manner.

My advice to you is to be discreet but upfront and honest with the firm you choose to worth with. Discuss the need to be on local clients, and remember – the vast majority clients in larger cities are accessible by mass transit or car. I have no doubt that you will have a successful career in public, even if you are there for the “résumé stamp.”

Three Social Networking Tips for Accountants

Depending on where you’re working these days, you might already be or soon to be under snow. Why not put that much-needed day “working” from home to benefit your next career move? Here are three steps that you can take now to better your social networking profile to prepare for post-busy season.

• Update your LinkedIn account – When was the last time you refreshed your LinkedIn account? Dig up the password, log in, and revamp your profile. Those 23 requests sitting dormant in your inbox? Accept them. Update your work experience. Include details about both the industries you work in and the responsibilities you’ve accrued. Remember, recruiters are constantly filtering through LinkedIn profiles looking for potential matches.

Also, make sure you upload a respectable picture. If it is something you wouldn’t want your client seeing, pass on it. But whatever you do, do not leave the picture option blank. Recruiters are much more inclined to review a potential match if the profile includes a picture. Worst case scenario – have your roommate, significant other, or spouse snap a photo one morning before you head to work (the post-work look of disgust should be avoided).


• Be socially responsible – No, I’m not talking about going out and saving the whales. For those of you who are active on social networking sites, you need to be cognizant of the fact that you’re constantly creating an online footprint.

Facebook – Double check the settings in your Facebook account. Facebook is continuously altering these; oftentimes the new defaults leave your information wide open for the general public to see. Your Facebook profile — including status updates, wall posts, and photo albums — should be off limits to viewers who are not your Facebook friends. Speaking of photos, lose the keg stand picture from senior year. You wear a button-down shirt to work now.

Twitter – The email address on your resumé is most likely connected to your Twitter account. Block your tweets from the general public if you are discussing things you’d rather not share with a potential interviewer.

• Dig up those old recruiter emails – You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re cold, robotic emails that tease you on random weekday afternoons. Typically they’re titled, “New Opportunities in hedge funds” but the more apt title is, “How to get the $*@! off your current engagement and home in time for dinner.”

Dig through your old emails and find some of these. Read through them. See what sparks your interest. At the very least, try to figure out what you want to do next, what qualifications you already have, and what you can do to prepare yourself for the next step. Your current engagement might be providing you an opportunity to expand your skill set; jump at that possibility.

How the Big 4 Are Helping Career Moms Have It All

The Harvard Business Review’s blog (Harvard blogs?) ran a piece earlier today about a recent Pew Research study that claims more women are not having children.

The HBR brushes over the whole birth control thing and serves its best interest by focusing on what they consider having it all (an advanced degree and at least one child), picking the following statistic out of the hay stack, “in 2008, 24% of women ages 40-44 with a master’s, doctoral or professional degree had not had children, a decline from 31% in 1994.”


This had me thinking about the benefits that the Big 4 provide to their employees going through early parenthood. What might surprise you (or might not) is how similar the firms’ services are.

From PwC.

From Deloitte.

From KPMG.

From E&Y.

Parental leave of absence: “Eligible primary care parents with three months of service can use six weeks of paid parental leave during the year following birth or adoption placement (three weeks for non-primary care parents). This is in addition to maternity disability benefits, if applicable, of 60% to 100% for approximately 8 weeks. Paid parental leave runs concurrently with any job-protected time under family and medical leave.”

Provided by every Big 4 firm:

Adoption assistance – Per EY’s site: “Pays expenses up to $5,000 per child (with an additional $1,000 for special needs children), with paid leave available for the caregivers, along with resource and referral services.”

Lactation program – PwC’s program, explained: “Access to educational materials, unlimited pre/post-birth counseling from nationally recognized lactation specialists and breast pump discounts are available through this program. Private mother’s rooms are also available in many of our offices.” Do conference frooms count as “mothers’ rooms?”

Parental paid leave of absence

Deloitte – 2 weeks (this is all I could find – can anyone prove differently?)

PwC – up to 6 weeks

KPMG – 8 weeks “Professionals who plan to return to work after the birth or adoption, are eligible for two weeks (10 days) of paid child care leave.”

E&Y – 6 weeks

Unique programs:

Family time off – The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 promises 12 weeks of unpaid leave for those employees who need to take care of a sick family member. E&Y extends this service to 16 weeks.

Back up Child and Elder Care – many of the firms provide some kind of support for employees when family care emergencies occur. KPMG takes things one step further by allowing employees to share their unused resources with colleagues that have depleted their resources.

Note – I used external websites when reviewing the different options – these might outdated from what you have internally. Does your local office offer something unique that is not listed here? Share details in the comments.

More Women Manage to Have It All [HBR]