There seems to be little consensus among CPAs in New York about how to manage summer internships, in the wake of the global pandemic, meaning that this year’s class will find their experience to be dramatically different from firm to firm.

The pandemic posed a unique opportunity for EisnerAmper LLP to rethink how it could provide its interns with an experience that would allow them to get to know the firm and also for many of the firm’s colleagues to get to know the interns. EisnerAmper Chief People Officer Lori F. Reiner said that, after some research, her firm transformed its long-standing in-person internship program into a new program called the Future Leaders Experience, or FLEx Internship—a program that is 100 percent virtual.

Interns in this six-week program will not have the same exposure to client engagements that others had in the past, but the program will feature a number of talks with senior firm leaders in a wide variety of practice areas, including CEO Charles Weinstein. Furthermore, the interns will each be assigned what Reiner called an “ambassador” from the firm, with whom participants will develop a relationship through a series of one-on-one video meetings. The program will culminate with participants giving a video presentation on one of several possible topics.

While Reiner acknowledged that this experience might be a little different from what the interns were expecting, she said that the program was still designed to check all the boxes as to what the interns are hoping to gain from their internship experience.

“[They want] to build relationships in the firm and really understand what a possible career here could look like,” she said, “and also just gain some valuable experience, whatever that experience is, so they can go back to school in the fall and say, when they see something in their accounting class, ‘I was exposed to that this summer, and it makes sense to me, more than it would have before.’”

She added that all the summer interns who successfully complete the FLEx program will be receiving job offers for November 2021, so that they will be able to go into their fifth year of schooling confident that they have something waiting for them at the end.

Other firms, such as Marks Paneth LLP, have made some modifications to their internship season but are largely operating as usual. Lauren Garnett, a human resources manager at Marks Paneth, said that the firm’s interns are immediately put to work on client engagements alongside full employees, and that’s not going to change once the summer arrives. She did note that the interns whom the firm took on in the spring were affected the most, as Marks Paneth ended some of their terms a little early. But she explained that this was due to lack of work, as a result of the IRS moving the tax deadline to July. She added that the firm plans to honor all of its summer internship offers, and that these interns will be put on tax work.

Garnett did note, however, that, like the staff accountants, interns will do their work 100 percent virtually during the entire summer. She has told them that there are no expectations for them to be in the physical office. She was confident that they will be able to have the full work experience, noting that the interns whom the firm did keep on from the spring have been even more productive than they were before the lockdowns hit.

“A lot of them have more availability than they previously did because they’re learning virtually as well,” she said. “With them learning virtually, they’re not tied to the same time frames they previously were, so while we pared down the number of interns, those interns that stayed with us are able to work more hours, so we’ll be able to do more with less.”

Abe Schlisselfeld, partner-in-charge of the real estate group at Marks Paneth, added that the firm’s decisions come from its own philosophy of what it wants from its interns and what it believes the interns want from the firm.

“I know there are firms doing these virtual ones, and our feeling was, you know, we don’t do the internship programs for the happy hours,” he said. “We want to give them a real work experience and didn’t feel they would get that this summer [without client work].”

He also noted that many of the summer interns will likely be returning students who are already familiar with the firm’s processes and software, so there won’t be much of a learning curve with this class.

Other firms, such as PKF O’Connor Davies LLP, were hopeful that their offices would reopen by the time the summer internship season began. Clare E. Cella, the partner-in-charge of the firm’s New York City office, said that the firm did initially shorten its internship season, going from an eight-week program, beginning in June, to a four-week program, ending in August, to account for the possibility that the lockdowns wouldn’t be over by the traditional start date. Then, toward the end of May, for the safety of its employees and interns, the firm made the decision to deliver a two-week virtual program.

“We think it’s important to have the interns out at clients and have the experience of what their work life will be like when they’re actually out there in the industry. But we won’t be able to provide that experience this year, which is unfortunate. We will strive to provide our interns with a taste of the profession in a virtual learning environment,” Cella said.

A. Rief Kanan, a SUNY New Paltz accounting professor and director of the school’s Business Institute, said he has been hearing about a wide variety of options from the firms that he usually deals with in the region, observing that the only real consistency is how fluid the situation is for so many.

“On the one hand, they’re trying to cling to a plan, and once the plan comes to fruition, have some sort of new normal that allows them to engage. Most say they’re prepared to move quickly if they have to change things. One of the realizations from this whole COVID-19 situation is the need for agility. The firms that reacted in an agile way have done OK,” he said.  

Nonetheless, he said firms are, by and large, trying to minimize the amount of changes to their programs, as they hope that businesses will reopen soon. For example, he quoted one firm’s HR manager as saying, “We are hopeful that hiring needs will be similar as in years past, but only time will tell.”  Kanan was surprised to hear about EisnerAmper’s plan to go 100 percent virtual, with no client work, but he also said that he was equally surprised that more firms hadn’t planned for at least a partially virtual program, saying that’s what he would have expected them to do.

Kanan added that the pandemic has made it a little more difficult for him to assist his students. Normally, his firm contacts in the region allow him to connect students with internships and new-hire opportunities, but with his school having closed and his classes now having gone virtual, this has become more difficult, because not everyone is actually in the New Paltz region. He noted, for instance, that a lot of his students are teleconferencing into class from their homes on Long Island, “so [while] we can help with firms in the Hudson Valley area,” right now they’re on their own looking for internships elsewhere. This was particularly the case for one student he talked about who is actually in Korea right now and has had to change his internship plans.

Entry-level hires
After the summer internship season will come the onboarding of new entry-level hires. In this case, plans will remain largely the same as they were, although firms will continue to remain fluid if circumstances warrant a change.

Reiner does not anticipate EisnerAmper’s plans for first-years to change at all, as it typically starts them in the first week of November. In this respect, the firm has no plans right now to change its timing, saying, “We absolutely need our staff.”

Cella said that PKF O’Connor Davies’ first-year staff have had their offers and acceptances in hand “for quite some time,” but while the firm normally brings new hires in during the summer, this year, the date will be pushed back for a couple of weeks, but otherwise the firm’s plans remain unchanged.

Meanwhile, Garnett did not mention plans to adjust the new-hire start dates at Marks Paneth, but she said that the firm is currently evaluating the situation. Since the firm’s start date is in October, however, she is confident that it will have time to see how things work out and adjust as necessary.

While plans to bring on first-years haven’t really changed, firms are wondering how they will manage the training of these new hires. Reiner said that, in the past, the firm would fly all the entry-level hires to one common location, usually EisnerAmper’s Metropark, N.J., office, for a national-level training session.

“That will be hard to do this year [given the pandemic], so we’ve been starting to think of how we will onboard, what that experience will be like, since, obviously, part of that experience is getting to know each other,” she said, adding that the firm already has a few ideas that it’s exploring.

Garnett raised a similar concern, noting that “even from October, it’s just a different world.”

“We’re not going to be in a situation where we’ll have 40 people in one training room all together,” she said. “So we are already in talks of how we would really handle all our training for those associates. Maybe virtually.”