To many, the words “Big four” might sound random and unimportant. But to accounting students this means a lot more. The big four is basically 4 massive global firms that dominate the auditing, tax and consulting space. They are: Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG. Due to their prestige reputation getting a career or even an internship can be daunting task.
But through countless interviews, hard work, networking and a little bit of luck I was able to land an internship with Deloitte for the summer of 2016. I’m going to share the process I went through to acquire this great opportunity and give a little insight, to those that are considering finding an opportunity with the Big four. Without further ado lets get started!
So first off I started by going to the Whitewater career fairs and introducing myself to the campus recruiters. I did this the first semester of my freshman year. I didn’t have much luck, but I did have a couple of interviews. But none of them were successful. But the take way from this was that, it really helped me tune up my interview skills. I knew exactly what to say for certain questions, what questions to ask and most importantly I was confident during the interviews.
So when the spring 2015 semester arrived I was ready for the career fair. I went to it and spoke to the Deloitte Recruiter. Unfortunately Deloitte did not offer internships to freshman. But they did have a program specifically for prospective freshman, which was extremely competitive and selective. I ended up applying and I got an interview. I traveled to the Milwaukee office for my interview and had 3 consecutive meetings. Each meeting was 1 hour long and I spoke with some high-ranking employees. They asked me a variety questions from my resume, to what I do in school, to what my goals are. Leaving that interview I was extremely confident that I got my shot, due to the way everything went.
The next day I get a call from Deloitte stating that I have been selected to attend the NexGen Leaders Conference in Westlake, Texas. The trip was an all expenses paid by Deloitte, the only thing I had to do was accept it. This was one of the most exciting times for me because; this was something that I have wanting to do this for a while.
Fast forward to the end of July, I was on my way to the Deloitte University in Westlake, Texas. As I landed, I got my bag and went straight to the shuttle that was waiting for me. Heading into the Deloitte campus, I met a few individuals like my self that had come to the conference (97 individuals to be precise). Many of them were from big institutions like Cornell, NYU, UC Berkley, UCLA and many more. Because I was from a small mid western school I knew I had to perform to the best of ability to land internship the summer of 2016. For three straight days I gave it my all. From solving accounting related problems, presentations, thinking outside the box and team building activities. There were two advisors watching over every individual at all times. At the end of the conference they gave a review for every student they were responsible for. This review would dictate if you would be given an opportunity for next summer or not. The conference concluded and we all went home as life long friends.
About 5 days later I get a call from the local recruiter asking about on how the conference went, what city I would like to intern at and what two service fields I would like to focus on (audit, tax, advisory or consulting). I picked Chicago as my preferred city and Audit plus Advisory as my service fields. Remember they were just gathering information; no offer had been made yet. So I waited patiently for 4 weeks. Finally I got a call saying that they would like to provide me with a 10 week internship in downtown Chicago for audit and tax. In that very exact moment I had never been so happy in my life.
Now that the first semester of my sophomore year is almost finished, I have been working hard to do good in my accounting class and the rest of my classes to maintain a high GPA.
This opportunity is called the “Deloitte Discovery internship” and it only for freshman. You can find more information about it by clicking here. Also, if you happen to have any question please comment them below.
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