Intern Season
It’s not easy to attract millennial employees in today’s job market. Talented graduates have plenty of options. That may be why Harley-Davidson has put a unique spin on its internship program this year. Eight interns who want to pursue careers in social media, marketing, PR or communications will have a chance to ride motorcycles around the country and document their adventures on social media. To sweeten the deal even further, Harley-Davidson is letting them keep the bikes at the end of the 12-week program.
Not to be outdone, Oscar Meyer runs a year-long internship where 12 college students, in teams of two, co-pilot six Wienermobiles, 27-foot hotdogs on wheels. The teams travel around the country to parades, fairs, car shows and other events, representing the company’s brand. The highly competitive internship attracts applicants from around the country.
No doubt as summer approaches, we’ll be hearing more about the many interesting and different internships companies are testing this summer.
Here at Marcum, we’re not planning to give our interns the keys to a Harley – or even a giant hotdog-mobile – but we take a lot of pride in offering them a deep immersion in our entrepreneurial culture. It starts with the Marcum Summer Leadership Program, where we recruit juniors majoring in accounting from top-rated colleges across the country for an intensive, hands-on introduction to a potential career at our firm. We pride ourselves on being a top 20 accounting firm. An internship here gives interns a really good look at what accounting is like. The two-day program includes direct interaction with people at all levels of the organization, including me, so they get a feel for who we are and what we’re all about. The highlight is a real-world entrepreneurial case-study competition, where the students form teams and tackle tough challenges we come up with.
Students love having a chance to show us how they think, explore aspects of accounting they didn’t learn about in their classes and to start building their career network while still in school. And we love the opportunity to see if there’s good chemistry with our Firm.
About 80% of the students who participate in the program return the next year for our traditional internship program, which takes place throughout the year and is available nationally, throughout all of our offices. (We recruit for it every fall). We customize the hours to our interns, reflecting our commitment to flexibility. Marcum has long been a pioneer in the accounting industry, in terms of tailoring associates’ schedules to their lifestyle needs. The flexibility makes our program very attractive to accounting students pursuing a five-year degree with 150 credits, a pursuit that puts more demands on their time than a standard, 120-credit degree. I’m happy to say both our Leadership Program and our internships are fully committed for this upcoming season.
Some of these students ultimately become associates at Marcum. And when they do, we’re happy to show them the many career paths they may pursue – and explore with them how they can make an impact from the get-go. We pride ourselves in having a very unbureaucratic culture, so it’s easy for them to find assignments at the Firm that tap into their personal interests and sense of purpose and give them many opportunities to learn.
A job isn’t just about collecting a paycheck. It’s important to have passion for what you’re doing. Joining the right team is a big part of that. And we’re honored to offer the ideal environment to grow to many bright, entrepreneurially minded new associates every year.
