I believe internships are a crucial part of gaining valuable experience in any field and with accounting, this couldn’t be truer. My internship with ADKF was not my first internship in an audit department; however, it is the one I gained the most experience from. I chose ADKF because I wanted to be able to experience a wide range of clients, not just non-profit, but for-profit, public, and governmental. I also didn’t want to spend months on only one client (which is the case at a lot of the bigger firms.) Not only was I able to experience a variety of clients, but I also gained experience with audits, reviews, and compilations, which for many, reviews and compilations are only something heard about once in an audit class in college and never spoken about again.
My internship with ADKF was about four months long, and in that time, I was part of every engagement and gained valuable, on-the-job training from each of my seniors, audit managers, and even one-on-one training with the audit partners, which is not something I was expecting. Many companies and firms say they have an open-door policy, but this is true here at ADKF. Although I came to ADKF with some accounting experience, I was not prepared for all the knowledge I would gain and all the challenges I would face. I was also not expecting to feel so at-home within the audit department. By nature, I am a perfectionist and embrace challenges. Although this is not the case for everyone, I found that if you want to be challenged and seek it out, the audit department is more than happy to present you with those opportunities. They truly want you to learn, at whatever pace is most comfortable for you, and will strive to ensure you are guided and acquire as much knowledge from each engagement as possible. If someone is seeking real-world experiences, challenges, knowledge outside of a textbook, and true application of accounting principles and practice, ADKF can give you that.