While every internship is specific, there are some points of commonality between internships at EY, Deloitte, PwC, and KPMG. The workloads may also vary – but the emphasis on training is massive.
When hiring interns, the Big Four tend to search for goal faculties and strong GPAs yet regularly prioritize cultural healthy over existing technical abilties, consistent with interviews and new survey effects from Vault.
The quiet result is that a lot of the internship is centered around training – something inexperienced interns respect simultaneously, as a few others locate monotonously.
For instance, undergraduate summertime interns at KPMG will spend a complete week doing a countrywide off-website training in Orlando, Florida, before they even begin. Second-year students selected to participate in Deloitte’s “Discovery” internship application might be invited to a three-day national conference at Deloitte University throughout the summertime months.
“Training right here is too fashionable at the beginning; I suppose it might be better to have greater personalized or at least departmentalize the schooling as it can be peculiar depending on the organization you figure in,” said one former PwC intern. This is a commonplace complaint amongst individuals who know the enterprise line wherein they’d like to paint, though interns who need access to a couple of opportunities see complete schooling as a plus.
After schooling week, KPMG interns will spend half of-of the summer operating in audit and the other half in either tax, advisory, or commercial enterprise enablement offerings. Deloitte’s sophomore interns will rotate throughout the firm’s three essential commercial enterprise traces: audit & guarantee, chance, financial advisory, or tax. “The internship is all about figuring out what you need to do lengthy-time period and setting yourself in front of the human beings that run the group,” stated a former Deloitte intern in New York who is now with EY. “Use all the networking occasions for your benefit.”
You’re probably to be overworked. Or bored
Depending on your university, you could intern at one of the Big Four at some stage in the summer or during your junior 12 months. The gain of a summer internship is during the gradual season at audit and tax firms, there are fewer paintings and greater time for training and mentoring. But this frequently leads to “monotonous,” “tedious,” and “dull” assignments that may be repetitive and forward-questioning, in place of essential consumer work, in step with Vault respondents.
Meanwhile, interning for the busier winter months is enormously stressful. It comes with long hours, which can be mitigated, particularly if you are hired hourly, as is the industry norm, and are eligible for time beyond regulation. Most Big Four interns are recognized to make $30 consistent with an hour and up. A former KMPG intern stated that at the same time as the in-semester internship changed into a endure, it furnished more hands-on paintings enjoy and the capacity to make closer connections with present-day employees. “The companies are huge. You can wander off at some point of the summer and now not get whatever out of it,” she said.
Consulting gigs mirror “complete-time” work.
Like all companies with a consulting exercise, the Big Four look to MBA packages to fill a number of the seats within their advisory practices. But they hire undergrad students as nicely. Those who interned as specialists at EY, Deloitte, PwC, and KPMG have normally been extra constructive, approximately the revel in those who simplest labored in tax and audit. Consulting interns stated they frequently worked on important obligations, interfaced with customers and top control, and even traveled to customer websites.
“It was correct to experience tour; however, that also meant that I was no longer round for internship occasions,” a former Deloitte intern stated.
The fine manner to excel
We interviewed both former Big Four interns in conjunction with Vault respondents’ plethora and supplied identical recommendations for students. Take a class in Microsoft Excel and emerge as talented as viable before beginning your internship. Knowing Excel “can place you miles beforehand of the competition” as you’ll be able to finish work assignments that others can’t, according to the previous PwC intern.