#40 Internships
Jun 14th, 2009 by pfi
Accountants are rather fond of interns, both being an intern and having one to order around. Interns are great targets for pranks and the perfect excuse to blow the budget. Three words: “It’s for recruiting.”
In accounting, you typically have the summer internship which is all about learning how to claim expenses. The winter internship falls in busy season and manages to involve something called work. Internships last a couple months, and you would not believe how much gets spent on interns.
Interns typically fly out to training and then spend the rest of their internship setting up the printer, making photocopies, and getting coffee for the team.
Since interns are considered prospective hires, accountants can’t be too politically incorrect. If an intern actually found out what it is an accountant does, there’s no way they would agree to come back full time. Luckily enough, interns spend just enough time at the beach, at baseball games, or out “teambuilding” that they never have to experience real work with impossible deadlines.
Interns occupy a weird spot on the social ladder. They can receive the best treatment because the company would like them to come back full time. However, they do get assigned (depending how you see it) the most boring jobs. Photocopying binders, making binder tabs, and grabbing coffee take more time than you would think.
Normal pranks (which deserves its own future post) that accountants love to pull work even better on interns. Interns, eager to please, are highly susceptible to office pranks. In fact the more coworkers that are involved in an elaborate prank (especially to the detriment of productivity), the better the prank.
As much abuse as interns get, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. Interns get paper experience for their resumes and can be paid a pretty penny. Considering that interns get overtime and regular accountants don’t, interns can actually make more than everybody else if it’s crunch time. Accountants benefit because they have someone to pick on and do their menial tasks.
I myself am a future intern/co-op to be. I will be working my first season from January to April of 2010, a second one from January to April of 2011, and a final term from January to August of 2012. Apparently, when we graduate, we got straight into the Macc program at our school. After that we’re apparently hired directly as senior associates. Any advice for people like me?
Chris – do you go to UW, by chance?
And I’ve never been an interm paid to make photocopies and such. My co-op terms – especially from the 2nd one onward – were filled with deadlines and impossible tasks. I’m a graduate now and still an associate, btw – but I also moved out of audit.
You know it!
I did two internship in Tax at my firm before joining them full time and I did not get coffee for anyone or set up the printer. I was only asked to make photocopies around April 10th until my internship was up on April 15th because all of my work was being reviewed by Seniors/Managers. I enjoyed both of my internships and LOVE having interns below me now. They do get a lot of work at my firm, but they are getting paid overtime so they don’t mind working overtime. The money is great for interns, until they become full-time salaried staff!!!
Chris- my advice is to listen to those trying to teach you (they are only trying to help you learn), show a will and desire to learn and respect those above you! An internship is a 4 month or more job interview, so just be mindful of that!
Made lots of copies, worked plenty of overtime, picked up lots of meals, got paid more than I do now. I wish I was an intern again.
My firm once took a PROSPECTIVE intern to lunch (before we even hired her). Her resume was that good, and we really wanted her. I was a staff at the time, so I got a free lunch, and I got to charge 1.5 hours of time for “recruiting” (I’m hourly so normally I wouldn’t get paid for lunch). Didn’t work out so well for the company though – we hired her, spent a few thousand bucks’ worth of people’s time training her… and she worked about a month at the beginning of busy season and promptly resigned.
Big ups! That’s what this is meant to be.
Interns are paid more than first year staff: confirmed. During our first year, one of my colleagues actually saw an intern’s paystub – he was definitely making more than either of us at the time.
I loved being an intern. Worked 65-70 hours per week and since compensation was non-exempt, I remember it coming to an annualized salary of about $102,000. That wasn’t bad at all for a 21 year old. Of course, now that I’ve accepted a full-time offer, that salary is cut in half, approximately. Go figure! While I personally loved the work, I think it would be difficult for people who have not had class experience before hand. I had done an internship in Tax and had taken two Tax classes prior, which helped a lot.
Being an intern was a great gig, until the cost cutting came into play. When I was an intern, we could get as much overtime as we wanted, we went to baseball games, elaborate happy hours, and we all got a trip to Disney World! No more of that, interns have to get overtime approved by partners. Which means no intern works overtime. HR (don’t even get me started on those people) told the interns to come in at 8:30 which means they have to leave at 5:30. Guess what interns we don’t work those hours. Most tax people arrive between 9:30 and 10AM and we don’t leave until after 7PM. So they just sit around charging G&A until we show up an hour later, and then they just drop their assignments at 5:30 to go home. Its similar to “The Flinstones” when Fred hears the whistle blow and immediately drops the boulder he is moving and runs to the car. Are other big fours making cuts to their intern programs? We don’t even have Disney World anymore. These poor kids got the shaft.
PwC pretends to put a happy face on the current economic situation to the interns but it is all lies. They are providing these kids with completely false hopes. At the drop of a hat another program will be cut, another worker concession made, or employee fired. Don’t believe the hype at PwC.
STAMM LIED.
Chris – they hire you in directly as a senior associate? that sounds like the cruelest prank I have ever heard! How can you go from being an intern (very little responsibility other than the all too necessary coffee) straight to being the senior with pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum responsibility wise?
This is so true. So many people I know started working at firms thinking it would be exactly like how they thought it would be at recruiting events. Didn’t take that long to figure out how wrong they were.
Meh, I’d still do it.
Yes J, I do go to UW. And yes Shannon, this does happen in real life. People are often hired right when they graduate as senior or “experienced” associates.
Apparently, how much experience you are getting in the brief work term depends entirely on where you end up. I heard of a guy at PwC who did his term there and was paid more or less to photocopy documents. Another upper year student I met, at PwC again (a different office), by contrast, was frantically hauled everyday from client to client with the rest of the team that he was assigned to. I suppose that it is just luck of the draw. Most of the smaller more local firms though seem to give real experience to their co-op/interns. Even so, everyone chases the big 4.
They gave interns better work assignments than they did a lot of the full-time associates at my office [a big 4]. I and a lot of the other associates were pretty peeved about it.
[…] effectively work for less than minimum wage, interns excepted. When they aren’t working large hours, accountants are taking vacation in large […]
If you’re looking for an internship, I know where you can look. Internships can be really hard and interns are so often under appreciated and overworked. I’m currently working a (PAID!) IT internship, but I can’t imagine having to work long hours and do grunt work for FREE… like so many others do. I found my internship using Vault; it’s an online career building service with reviews, tips, free information, and connections to hundreds of companies currently offering accounting internships. Most of their info is free so check out http://www.vault.com/wps/portal/usa/internships
“…the perfect excuse to blow the budget.” So true. I’ve done two internships, the first in corporate accounting and the second with a Big 4 firm. In my corporate internship I received subsidized housing, a daily maid, happy hour (free alcohol), free weekly cookout by the pool (more free alcohol), and I got paid to go golfing (and drink) on Monday afternoons to socialize/network. With all of that I still managed to work on meaningful projects and learn something. My public internship consisted of a lot of photo copying, coffee runs, and setting up printers! I also became very good at claiming expenses, and received a lot of free lunch. Its going to be a depressing to when I have to start working for real and give up all of those perks (plus the hourly pay).
Pwc portrays this amazingly fake image to interns and prospective hires. At our recruiting event and during on site interviews, they would have these super smart 1 % cream of the crop (young and good looking)senior associates addressing them. These “top guys” would go and on about how they get to try new stuff and travel around the globe in just 2-3 years on the job.
Few months into the job, you realize you are among the majority-the other 99%. Even within the tax dept, to switch from PCS to VC or Corp or SALT in like applying for a job!
However I must add, Big 4 internships are great and from at least what I saw, there was very little or virtually no admin duties.
I’m interning now at a not-for-profit, while it is not a big4 and I do not always get free lunch (some lunch meetings are paid for), I do get money each month for my rent while I am here and they gave me $1000 for “moving expenses” even though I only had to move 60 miles!! Love being an intern.
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