Leveraging a Big 4 internship
Hi guys.
I've managed to secure an audit internship at a Big 4 firm for this summer and as you can imagine, I'm over the moon about it. Now the plan is that I will enjoy my experience in audit and wish to take up a graduate position for the firm, assuming i was offered a full time place of course.
Now the thing that's bothering me is that in the back of my mind, I'm still thinking about whether i should have applied for i-bank internships instead as i managed to get offers from all 3 of the Big 4 firms that I applied to. Now obviously, it would be silly to think that just because I secured audit offers from top PS firms, I would have a good chance at banks, but part of me seems to think that I might have had a shot. I had made the decision to only apply for accountancy and other professional service firms because I quite simply didn't think i was was good enough. I'd never done any sort of interview before and had no application experience, and I guess i thought that accountancy would be alot easier to get into. I havn't accepted the offer yet, but i don't think there is going to be time to apply to banks now and i havn't done much preparation for banking applications/interviews as i did for accounting.
So I guess my questions to you guys are all along the lines of what are the possible routes from here.
- If I accepted the internship offer, and then turned down the firm's graduate offer (again assuming i obtained an offer) in order to apply for i-banking graduate positions, would i be looked down upon by banks for choosing accounting first (or even at all) rather than a banking internship. ie: would they prefer me to have done no internship at all rather than accounting as it may show I am not fully decided.
- At what point during/after the internship would I have to decide whether to accept a full time offer? I'm guessing it would be a bad idea to accept any such offer and then apply for graduate banking jobs in my final year, using the Big 4 offer as a back up and reneging on it if i got a full time banking offer.
- If i accepted the internship offer, accepted the grad role (assuming i got it etc..) and then went on to complete my 3 year starting contract gaining the ACA, how hard would it be to then swich to the TAS or corporate finance servicelines of the firm? Obviously these areas are alot more closely related to banking and could possibly be used to show my interest in banking (if i still wanted to apply at that point).
- By accepting one of the Big 4 offers and therefore rejecting the other two, am i burning bridges and completely crossing off the chance to work for them in the future? I mean, they are going to know that I chose a different firm over them, so they probably won't be able to count on my complete commitment to them in the future right. Am I right?
I guess the overall point to this is that I'm worried that by doing this audit internship, I will set my future in stone as an accountant, which is something that I'm still not sure if i want to do.
Any advice, thoughts or similar experiences would be great.
Cheers
Note: I'm from the UK
Too much writing. Lost interest after the first paragraph and didn't read the rest. Anyway, accounting is boring, but it's safe and you can make a good career out of it. General exits are for controller --> CFO track at fortune 500. Exiting into banking/consulting is very tough coming from audit at big4, though it's not impossible. The main thing you'll need to do is network and find your own way in because there's no well defined path for a guy coming from audit.
Thanks for the reply. I appreciate what your saying about the difficulty exiting into ibanking, but my question was more about the usefulness of just an internship at a Big 4 company. Would it provide any such prestige to my cv when applying to graduate ibanking roles, or would it be better to just have nothing?
Good luck regardless.
Well it's obviously way better than nothing... Even though it might not help, it definitely won't hold you back for full time applications. It's just if you are applying for IB positions, they will look more favorably to people with IB internships. If it's between you, a guy with IB internships, and a guy with no internships, you would be second choice.
The reason I was wondering whether it was better than nothing (as I say in the OP) was that I presumed Banks may see an internship in audit as a sign of indecisiveness or lack of commitment to IB. Thanks though. I do have other questions in the post but its up to you if you want to read it.
If you don't want to go full blown banking, you might consider looking into any big 4 transaction services group. since it's an advisory role, you would get much more diversified experience relative to audit. people in TS generally follow 3 or 4 paths during their career:
I've never really heard of anybody leaving TS for roles at a F500 company. There's a lot of people here who would tell you it's impossible to transition from Big 4 to a finance related career, just make sure you don't brand yourself as an accountant by waiting too long. TS will offer you the exposure to PE and bankers, you just need to capitalize on it.
In any event, you should really do what makes you happy and where you think you will do well.
heres the thing about auditing internship... they don't work you hard, cause they want to retain you hence you spend a summer geftting paid/having fun/not doing a lot of dog work that you'll b doing once you start full time.
its better than nothing on your resume, but people looking over your resume at a bank are probably well aware of the fact that you didn't get much out of the internship
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