<p>I'm so excited! My friend/neighbor who I've done babysitting, dogsitting and various other random jobs for since high school and I caught up over dinner tonight while I'm down on spring break. When I mentioned to his wife, who is a self-employed CPA, that I'm an accounting major, she offered me a summer job! I'm so happy I'm gonna have probably a few summers of relevant work experience for my resume! Plus, her husband has always paid me handsomely for any work I did, so I could be looking at a lot of extra cash (a huge plus for us college kids) along with the work experience!</p>
<p>Not really any point to this post lol I'm just really happy and thought I'd share!</p>
<p>Congrats! It will be a great experience for you, especially starting out.</p>
<p>I would be careful getting caught into the thinking that you should do that for each summer. It will look better if you have a wide range of experiences/employers/internships during college. Most notably, in the corporate environment (which a self-employed CPA wont offer). </p>
<p>Nonetheless, I think it sounds like the perfect job to become acquainted with accounting work in the real world!</p>
<p>Thanks Goose. Informative post as usual! I live in West Palm/South Florida but go to school in Orlando. Therefore my plan is to try to do something different during the school year in Orlando while working for my neighbor during the summer, unless of course I get some sort of larger accounting firm internship. Then I would take that over summer. Hopefully during the school year in Orlando I can find an equally valuable work experience. I know Disney offers an Accounting/Finance internship for juniors or seniors that is during the fall semester. I will try for that when I’m junior. </p>
<p>So do you believe it would beneficial to do anything in a more corporate setting rather than only looking for employment at small accounting offices, even if its non-relevant? Obviously if I can find something on a larger scale in accounting, I would jump on it, but if the choice came down to a corporate position that is not accounting/business related versus an accounting type position at a small office, does the accounting position still take the cake in your opinion?</p>
<p>It would depend on the corporate position and with what company. If it was something like Disney working in their Marketing group, then I think that adds substantial value and really diversifies your exposure. You then add in your work at the self-employed CPA level and you add another dynamic to your exposure. Lastly, if you can find a B4 caliber accounting job for an internship it would give you even better exposure to different business operations and the lifestyles that accompany each.</p>
<p>With internships, I am all for A) Exposure and B) Brand names. I think you can leverage your lack of experience when you first began by saying “I wanted to see a variety of industries and have multiple types of experiences so that I could really develop my understanding of the working world, specially X discipline.”</p>
<p>If you want to do B4 audit, then eventually having a B4 internship should be the end goal. However, you can accomplish that through a variety of approaches. I like the “exposure with a couple big names…even if it isn’t exactly audit related” for a first and maybe even a second internship.</p>