What Are the Benefits of an Accounting Internship?

An accounting internship is helpful in clarifying your career goals, giving you work experience, providing job leads, solidifying accounting principles, acquiring academic credit, narrowing your field of study goals, reducing tuition, and acquiring experience with clients.

Job Knowledge

Internships in accounting give you a taste of the volume of work and technical expertise necessary to thrive in the profession. An internship could confirm your goals or, equally important, it could make you realize that accounting is not for you. You will know, at the end of your internship, whether or not you enjoy the profession.

Resume Enhancement

Internships give you experience and skills to enhance your resume. You will learn about the organization’s politics and culture, teamwork, expectations, demeanor, and mentoring.

Future Employment

Internships often lead to full-time jobs after you have acquired your degree. Sometimes a job is offered by the firm for which you interned, but because people move around in the industry, any contacts that you make will assist you in developing a job network.

Defining Concepts

Internships bring a sense of reality to the abstract concepts that you learn in class. Having experience with controls or audits will enhance your ability to discuss them in class, learn more about them, and give you participation credit.

Academic Credit

Internships can lead to academic credit. They also add to your qualifications if you are applying for graduate school, where enthusiasm and experience with the subject matter are valued by professors on selection committees.

Narrowing Goals

Internships let you see the inner workings of a firm and the various different job positions available, giving you a sense of specialist positions in departments like auditing, tax, management advisory, financial planning, business valuation, mergers and acquisitions, control systems, or litigation support. Such knowledge allows you to select classes that meet your career goals.