Post: #1

Hey I'm a college student who was fortunate enough to obtain an audit internship this busy season for a regional firm in my area. However, this internship is not going as planned. It is a full-time internship, which means I travel with the firm as well. I get all the great perks a full-time audit staff would get along with all the complicated work as well. I was expecting it would be hard, balancing four courses in college with this internship, but the courses are not whats killing me, its the work. They give me these sections to Audit, and when I ask the seniors for help, half the time they get annoyed and give me a 20-second lecture on scopes and sit down and get back to their work. I feel like they ask me to do so much shit I can't even wrap my mind around doing, and If I'm not able to do it within 2/3 the budgeted time, they gripe at me and tell me to hurry up. For any Auditors out there, do you have any online resources you use to be more efficient or anything that made you work faster? When I ask for help at work, they give me the PC answer like "look at the program" and " do what they did last year (aka "Sally")". This internship has me rethinking going into public Accounting at all, but apart of me wants me to believe it can't be this much bullshit.

Post: #2

I'm in Cancun lying on the beach right now as I write this. Yet, it was not always so. I too was an auditor at one of the Big 4 firms, plagued by idiot seniors such as yours and lived through it. I did it for 7 years so I was one of these seniors myself.

Unfortunately, there are no online resources to help you document or audit better. For the sake of your sanity understand this. There is a reason why thsee seniors tell you to follow the audit plan or last year's work. That reason is that they are fucking clueless themselves. They don't seem to have been trained well, which is not unexpected. Not to bash regional firms but their training pipeline does not allow for developing the best supervisors or mentors. The good thing is that these guys are the exception rather than the rule. You just got unlucky. Next time may be better.

The best, and maybe the only way to handle this is to look at prior years work and do your best. If you have questions, write them down and set up a half hour block here and there to go through them with the expectation that you got as far as you could. This type of organization and time management may most likely impress them. On top of this, understand another thing. You can only do so much. Do as much as you can, set up a time, ask questions, rinse and repeat. That's more than what they should be expecting from interns.

And another thing, if their firm is full of jackasses like these, apply to another firm for a full time position. Maybe something larger?

Post: #3

(02-27-2016 06:05 PM)Cobra Wrote:  I'm in Cancun lying on the beach right now as I write this. Yet, it was not always so. I too was an auditor at one of the Big 4 firms, plagued by idiot seniors such as yours and lived through it. I did it for 7 years so I was one of these seniors myself.

Unfortunately, there are no online resources to help you document or audit better. For the sake of your sanity understand this. There is a reason why thsee seniors tell you to follow the audit plan or last year's work. That reason is that they are fucking clueless themselves. They don't seem to have been trained well, which is not unexpected. Not to bash regional firms but their training pipeline does not allow for developing the best supervisors or mentors. The good thing is that these guys are the exception rather than the rule. You just got unlucky. Next time may be better.

The best, and maybe the only way to handle this is to look at prior years work and do your best. If you have questions, write them down and set up a half hour block here and there to go through them with the expectation that you got as far as you could. This type of organization and time management may most likely impress them. On top of this, understand another thing. You can only do so much. Do as much as you can, set up a time, ask questions, rinse and repeat. That's more than what they should be expecting from interns.

And another thing, if their firm is full of jackasses like these, apply to another firm for a full time position. Maybe something larger?

Yeah thats a backup plan of mine, a friend of mine is working with a national firm and his internship sounds like a breeze compared to mine. His smarter than me overall though I must admit, but his firm seems alot more adamant about helping him learn than my firm is than helping me learn.

Post: #4

(02-27-2016 05:41 PM)Phil Jackson Wrote:  Hey I'm a college student who was fortunate enough to obtain an audit internship this busy season for a regional firm in my area. However, this internship is not going as planned. It is a full-time internship, which means I travel with the firm as well. I get all the great perks a full-time audit staff would get along with all the complicated work as well. I was expecting it would be hard, balancing four courses in college with this internship, but the courses are not whats killing me, its the work. They give me these sections to Audit, and when I ask the seniors for help, half the time they get annoyed and give me a 20-second lecture on scopes and sit down and get back to their work. I feel like they ask me to do so much shit I can't even wrap my mind around doing, and If I'm not able to do it within 2/3 the budgeted time, they gripe at me and tell me to hurry up. For any Auditors out there, do you have any online resources you use to be more efficient or anything that made you work faster? When I ask for help at work, they give me the PC answer like "look at the program" and " do what they did last year (aka "Sally")". This internship has me rethinking going into public Accounting at all, but apart of me wants me to believe it can't be this much bullshit.

Don't waste your time with a firm like this one.

If you want to grow, you need seniors you can grow with.

If the seniors don't take the time to explain you stuff and help you out, there is no way you can really learn something.

Of course, you can copy and paste the last years work, change the date and the numbers, but what would be the point?

Unfortunately, it is a reality that also some staff in Big 4 work this way, but you don't want to be one of them.

In the future, you want to be in position to challenge the last years work and do it better. You can only do that with proper training - from your seniors and from school.

Ray

Post: #5

This internship is going no where. This is my last week and the chances of me getting hired do not look good. However, that's fine with me because this frims culture is just something I can't wrap my head around. These are some of the things they implement that is just fucking retarded.

1. They frown upon taking notes, apparently it's a waste of time to them, I understand audits change from client to client but there is enough concrete about it where taking notes is beneficial.

2.They drink and drive. No further explanation needed here.

3. Their is little to no structure in the learning process. It's ALWAYS Saly or read the program, when I ask from help from the seniors they're are like a deer in headlights half the time because they don't understand the concept of the section/workpaper.they just tell me to "do this" and you can tell they don't even know what they're telling me to do and are going off something they did in the past.Now I'm just like fuck it and teach myslef as much as I can.

4. They're is no remorse for when they make a mistake. I swear every time they rip me a new one and realize the issue was something they couldn't solve themselves with what I've been taught, there was never a "my bad " or anything.

5. They frown upon ambition. They're is an ambitious red pill new Audit staff employee who does well and has drive, and all these managers and seniors talk so much shit about him. It's the old "the nail that sticks out gets hammered" mentality.

I had to just give a rant real quick because this shit is stupid and I'm tired and I'm ready to put this shit behind me.