5 Chicago CPA Firms Create Innovative Staff Internship Program

Here’s one of the best “feel-good” stories in the CPA industry that I’ve come across this year.

Five competing but friendly local CPA firms in Chicago worked together to launch a staff internship program this summer that truly achieved synergistic results.  Called AISP – Accounting Internship Scholarship Program – these firms created:

• A meaningful way to give back to the community.
• A way to distinguish themselves from other firms.
• A curriculum that would be the envy of any university.
• A pipeline of highly qualified staff for future employment.
• Relationships with the accounting department heads of six major area universities.

Local firms across the country have long been frustrated by the difficulty in attracting the best and the brightest university accounting students to their internships because of how difficult it is to compete with powerhouse programs at the Big 4 and large regional firms. By combining forces, these 5 local Chicago firms were able to get on an even playing field with the larger firms.

AISP was the brainchild of Allen Bolnick, Managing Partner at Chicago area CPA firm Weltman Bernfield.  “We put together a training program to teach the interns what they need to know to succeed at firms like ours,” said Bolnick.

The five participating firms were:

• Brown Kaplan + Liss
• The Hechtman Group
• Porte Brown
• Silver Lerner Schwartz & Fertel
• Weltman Bernfield

For decades, local CPA firms have had two complaints about accounting programs at universities:

• The curriculums lack training in what it is really like to work in a CPA firm.
• The professors have a strong bias towards the Big 4 firms.

The AISP program addresses these issues.  Says Bolnick:  “AISP is strictly designed to be an education forum.  We want to expose the interns to what we do on a daily basis, put a positive spin on the profession and position our firms to attract star students.”

Overview of the program

• 8 interns were accepted from 27 applicants.
• The program was 8 weeks long, running in June and July.
• The curriculum included classroom instruction plus hands-on experience, working with real client projects.
• Each student received a $2,500 scholarship.

The curriculum was quite broad, including audit, review, compilations, 1040, S-Corp and sales tax returns, CCH Engagement software, QuickBooks software, overview to CPA firm marketing and a session on how CPA firms operate.

 Feedback from the interns

1. “Shadowing” of different staff members as they performed client work was the interns’ favorite part of the program.
2.  “Courses at school are all theoretical.  We have no idea what the accounting world is really like outside of school,” said one of the interns.
3. Software training was rated highly because students don’t get this in school.
4. Lots of time was spent with the partners of the five firms, giving them an exposure that will be tremendously helpful in interviews.
5.  The interns “got the message” that bringing in business and cultivating personal relationships with clients is a key to success at a CPA firm.

Benefits to the firms

1. The opportunity to meet with and thoroughly evaluate 8 top-notch interns nicely positions the firms to hire at least one of them.
2. Through the program, the firms enhanced their relationships with major universities.
3. Going through the process of creating the program’s educational content opened the eyes of the firms and triggered improvements to their training.
4. 86 partners and staff from the five firms were able to take advantage of a time-honored best practice of training:  The best way to learn is to teach.

For more information visit the program’s dedicated website:
Accounting Intern Scholarship Program