[nooffer3]

Hey guys,

About fished with my busy season internship with a Big 4 firm. I come in every single day with a great attitude and enthusiasm. Intern, can you run this report? Intern, can you pick up dinner? I do all of these with a smile on my face and joy in my heart. I was told I would not be receiving an offer. I feel like garbage. I worked so hard to get here and I feel like I blew it. I worked my ass off at this internship. I ate hours, I asked questions, I sought feedback every damn week. My feedback was I made a few spelling mistakes and forgot to include a link to another document. Here is some background on my internship:

I had a second round in a huge city, didn’t get an offer for an internship[. I came back to campus, talked to recruiters who decided they liked me and contacted my local office. Extremely late in recruiting season, I was contacted by said recruiter and came in for an interview. I was extended an offer at the conclusion of the interview. The manager and senior I had lunch with, just so happen to be at my client.

I went to training an noticed I was scheduled at one client the entire time and not past their 10-K filing date. The internship should have been 2 weeks longer, but my schedule was left blank for the 2 weeks after filing. All the other interns had at least 2 clients, while I had 1. I went in and gave 110%, with a smile on my face and super-human work ethic. I was bounced around from senior to senior for work. I recently found out that I wont be getting an offer. Whenever I sought feedback, all i got back was “You need to have a better self-review, I found 2 spelling mistakes in this 1 task and you forgot to include a link here.” There was nothing wrong with the actual auditing. I was told I had all the intangibles. “Keep up the great attitude and work ethic.” This is crushing me. I thought I had what it takes to be successful at the B4. Is it possible I was hired just for this one client for this one busy season? I feel like I did everything right. We did have a new part of this client’s audit, and there were associates from several different offices working on it. I feel like they saw this candidate with a great attitude (after I came back from huge city and still wanted to work for them, in spite of not receiving an an offer to intern) and thought “Hey, this guy could totally help us on X client’s audit as an intern. We don’t even have to give him an offer, we just need more help. He will just be happy to be here!” Was I ever even intended to be there long term? The more I look into it, the more the evidence points toward this kind of conclusion.

Sorry if this if my grammar is suspect here. I’m half drunk and in depression after being told I don’t have what it takes to make it in a job I’ve been trying to get for the past 2 years.

[Anonymous]

I'm one who usually hates excuses, but your explanation actually seems pretty plausible. At least at my big 4, they normally set aside the number of offers for all interns they take in, meaning they functionally will give you an offer unless you royally screwed up and are not a match for the job. In fact, I didn't even end up doing my internship and they gave me my offer immediately without any further interviews. They even ended up giving me a far better job opportunity with the firm. It seems that they may never have set aside that offer for you when you received the internship. Of course, there is always the chance that you just didn't cut it, but I find it really hard to believe that you would be that delusional to not have any substantive hints of that.

[mypetmeatball]

I can't really speculate why you didn't get the offer, but I do know there is more to this story on their end. There is no, as in ZERO, chance that you were snubbed for a spelling issue on a workpaper. Interns are notoriously horrible and make much bigger mistakes than that on a daily basis. I really have no idea what could have happened, but it's sure as hell not that.

[jelly]

I'm sorry, this isn't fun.

There could just be things completely out of your hands and control. For instance, the local office you were hired from could be bleeding client work, partners, etc in which case everybody else could be on the chopping block as well.

I get asked if there's space for new hires in my office. We have work for maybe 2.5 staff for the current staff of 3, so we're a bit underutilized and can't really justify new hires, except as a replacement.

Couldn't pass again!

[Anonymous]

I'm with Meatball on this one….interns are known for being total fu**-ups (in terms of what will ultimately be expected out of a full-time employee). Typically, if an intern shows up to work every day with a good attitude (like you've described), they get extended an offer. We had an intern a couple years ago who insulted the senior they were working for and had a generally poor attitude. They were not extended an offer, but again, that's pretty bad.

If I had to speculate (again let's remember that this is all conjecture), I would guess that you did just fine, but perhaps they were only looking for one intern to offer a position to and one of the other interns outperformed you. Not the end of the world…I would suggest you keep your head up, reflect on the experience you gleaned from your internship, and focus on improving the areas that were pointed out to you by the people giving you feedback. Cheer up and get ready to take on the next opportunity!

[RedHotAssets]

Same thing happened to me last year. I was on 3 very different engagements and worked my tail off on each of them. I never cruised Facebook at work, I asked questions if I was having difficulty working on something rather than staring at it for an hour, I always asked for more work when I completed a task. I was always on time, I stayed as late as they needed me to, and I always volunteered for unpopular tasks such as picking up dinner or scanning in workpapers. I did all of this with a smile on my face and never complained.

At the end of my internship, I was informed that I wouldn't be receiving an offer and their excuse was that “the other interns outperformed me.” This didn't convince me because I was friends with most of the other interns (still am, no bad blood between us) and many of them admitted to sitting on Facebook or dragging out tasks to avoid more work. While I hadn't exactly been hanging my hopes and dreams on working full-time Big 4, I was left with a “it would've been nice to get an offer too” feeling and began to worry that there was something wrong with me.

Looking back on it now, not getting an offer was the best thing that could've happened to me. My boyfriend told me that I seemed miserable during my entire internship and he was relieved when I didn't end up there. I sensed the “done after 2-3 years” mentality of everyone I worked with, and nobody seemed fully committed to the job. Maybe it was just the teams in particular that I worked with, but I experienced a lot of unprofessional behavior that I wouldn't have expected from the “gold standard” that the Big 4 boasts of.

I now work at a smaller firm where I feel much more at home with my coworkers and a sense of pride and commitment in my work. It's nice to just focus on work and keeping clients happy without worrying about backstabbing coworkers or working until 2am. I don't think I could've handled the lifestyle of the Big 4, and maybe that's why I didn't get the offer. Hopefully, you'll look back on this experience knowing that it wasn't the best option for you and that there's something out there better suited for you personally. Don't let a few overworked, overstressed guys make you feel worthless or bad about yourself like I did.

FAR: 77
BEC: 74, 73, 80!
REG: 81
AUD: 66 (study for 1 week = fail), 79

YOU CAN DO THIS! 🙂

[Anonymous]

One quick thing, I'm a B4 senior and it's never a good idea to eat hours. And at least in our office, admitting/agreeing to it isn't something that's going to push you up the ladder.

As for why you didn't get an offer, it could be that they needed help this busy season but didn't have room for another full-timer, or that while you did well the other interns appeared to do better.

Is there a recruiter in the office you could talk to and see if you can find out why you didn't get an offer? I don't know if that's something they'll answer, but if you approach it as trying to improve and gain experience from your internship, maybe they'll have a suggestion for you.

[troni]

When I was in college I did an internship at a big 4 firm during one summer, and it was terrible. It was clear from the very beginning than no one had any trust for interns, my assigned supervisor told me on day one that I won't be doing much work because there was no work available at the time, which I did not believe. It is not an exaggeration to say that in two months I did about 30 hours of audit work, the rest was just sitting there waiting for the day to end and pretending that I'm actually working. Like you I kept a smile on my face, but only for the first two days, after that I couldn't wait to get out, and by the end I was almost clinically depressed.

To be fair no one was mean or disrespectful, I did not bring anybody's dinner or coffee. The people I did work with were really helpful, and what little work I did was actually good.

At the end my supervisor was supposed to complete an evaluation form by asking all the seniors that I worked with about their opinion of my work. I knew some ugly things were about to be said, and I did not want to hear them, so I excused myself and went to the toilet. When I came back he handed me the evaluation form to give to the HR department. I read it and to my shock it wasn't bad at all, in fact, he recommended that I be offered a full time contract. I spent weeks trying to figure out what had happened. Is that what they show everyone? is there another secret report that I don't know about?

Anyway, I never went back to them again.

[Anonymous]

Take your internship experience and go talk to the other Big 3.

[Author]

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