This year’s crop of public accounting interns is finding out that offers for full-time employment in 2024 aren’t as common as they used to be.
GoingConcern highlighted this trend, which is impacting the business market broadly. We’ve spoken with partners at several major public accounting firms, and they have confirmed similar trends specifically within public accounting. While partners generally don’t like to be on the record for matters related to employment decisions, we’ve heard the following at multiple firms:
- Return offers are being extended at much lower rates than in previous years across all lines of business.
- Certain niche areas (e.g. SALT, Transfer Pricing, M&A Tax, etc.) extended no offers to their interns.
- Interns that were offered full-time placement frequently had to accept a delayed start date. These ranged from Fall of 2025 through Spring of 2026 for Summer of 2024 interns.
This is an uncommon situation in our experience. In the past, most public accounting firms would extend full-time offers to interns if they met two criteria:
- The intern showed a willingness to learn the business and participate in social functions; and
- The intern came to work on-time and fully-clothed.
In the days of yore, public accounting firms would hire too many associates and let attrition thin the ranks for them. This trend appears to be shifting in 2024.
Why are Firms Not Offering Full-Time Offers to Interns?
The most common explanation from our colleagues for the dearth of full-time offers boils down to ye olde “Pipeline Problems.” GoingConcern has been banging the drum on the issues related to the talent pipeline in accounting for years, but we’ll provide a brief recap on the issues at hand:
- Accounting, and public accounting in particular, is a stressful job with high barriers to entry (at least for CPAs), low starting salaries (relative to traditional finance roles), and high turnover.
- University students see these trends and want to pick careers outside of accounting.
- Fewer accountants enter the workforce each year, making jobs more stressful for the existing accountants. This results in fewer students wanting to become accountants, and so on.
- The powers-that-be seem hesitant to lower the barriers to entry or raise salaries to compete with finance roles, meaning there’s no relief for the pipeline shortage on the horizon.
Strangely, it appears some firms are dealing with the opposite problem for this year’s intern class. They have delayed starts for past associate classes, and now they don’t have enough openings to satisfy the delayed associates’ offers, last year’s interns’ offers, and this year’s interns’ offers. That means this year’s interns get the short end of the stick.
Other contributing factors appear to include real or perceived economic headwinds; austerity measures from companies with private equity backing; and good old-fashioned over-hiring.
What Does That Mean for the Interns?
If you’re a public accounting intern that did not receive a full-time offer from your firm, don’t fret. This is not a reflection of your ability, personality, or future career prospects. Unfortunately, you are a victim of your firm’s poor planning and the market’s poor timing, and no amount of studying or networking can prevent those things. Your best path forward is to enjoy what time you have left in college and work towards securing another internship or full-time job while studying. Generally, these situations are cyclical and the firms that didn’t extend full-time offers will be scrambling for associates in two years. In short, there will be plenty of opportunities to receive a paycheck in the future.
If you’re a public accounting intern that did receive a full-time offer, congratulations! This is great news. However, it does come with some wrinkles you should keep in mind:
- Regardless of your proposed start date, your public accounting firm may delay your start date in the future. Some may offer compensation if they do delay start dates, but they are under no obligation to honor their agreements or compensate you for breaking them.
- You should accept the offer, even if you really don’t want to work in public accounting full-time. It’s much easier and much less stressful to search for other jobs with an offer in-hand. Remember, you are also under no obligation to honor your agreement. The penalty for reneging on your offer is an awkward phone call.
- Save as much money as you can before you start your full-time job. Money tends to get really thin between graduation and starting your job, especially if you’re moving to a new city. Couple that with a delayed start date, and you could be taking on credit card debt to tide yourself over until the paychecks hit. Trust us, it’s not fun to start your career in a financial hole.
If you are an intern who didn’t receive a full-time offer, or received one with a delayed start date, please let us know in the comments below. We’d love to hear your experience and perspective.