Campus

Build Your Own Internship Program

Snapshots of Four BYOI Experiences


  • Sara D. — Pittsburgh BYOIP 2010 Intern
  • Cezanne A. — Charlotte BYOIP 2010 Intern
  • Tory S. — Nashville BYOIP 2010 Intern
  • Nicole B. — Chicago BYOIP 2010 Intern

  • Sara D.

    Sara D.

    Pittsburgh BYOIP 2010 Intern
    State and Local Tax (SALT)/Audit Rotation

    The Build Your Own Internship Program has been one of the best decisions I've made during my internship at KPMG. I am so thankful to have been offered a summer internship in the Pittsburgh SALT department, but to have the opportunity to do a three week rotation in Audit as well has been an amazing experience. My overall goal in completing an internship this summer was to hopefully gain an idea about what type of public accounting I would ultimately like to work in after graduation.

    During my time in Audit, I mainly worked with a first year associate in the Financial Services group. Some of my assignments were preparing workpapers, researching information about entities owned by the client, performing threshold tests, and ticking and tying financial statements to workpapers.

    During my time in SALT, I have had the opportunity to work closely with almost every member of the group, from the senior managers to associates. Some of my assignments from SALT were working with apportionment data, preparing reverse audit workplans, research for sales and use tax exemptions, reviewing past memos to leverage from for current projects, reviewing law citations for any amendments, and working on credit research for tax matrices. After my internship ended, I decided that I would like to peruse a fulltime position in the SALT practice.

  • Cezanne A.

    Cezanne A.

    Charlotte BYOIP 2010 Intern
    Audit/ Operations Risk Rotation

    As a client service professional, a key difference observed between my Core Service Line — Audit and my Developmental Service Line — Advisory is that from the clients' perspective Audit is more of a compliance-related necessity. While Advisory is more a "value added" service in many cases. If Audit is a "need", Advisory is a "want". This difference has significant implications on the relationship between the client and the KPMG professional.

    The BYOIP experience brings to light the dynamic opportunities for career and professional growth available at KPMG. As I progress in my career, I will know to keep an eye open on the scope and opportunities available at other service lines of KPMG for the skills and industry knowledge that I develop. I plan to now peruse a fulltime position in the Operations Risk practice.

  • Tory S.

    Tory S.

    Nashville BYOIP 2010 Intern
    Audit/ State and Local Tax (SALT) Rotation

    Last summer I was blessed to have had the opportunity to work at KPMG as a CSS intern. While I obtained sufficient experience in the audit and advisory service lines, I only received two days of experience in the tax practice. After choosing to come back as an audit intern, I applied to participate in the BYOI program, because I wanted to make sure that 1) I was going to start off in the right service line, 2) I would get exposure to different assignments and staff at KPMG, and 3) I would become more versatile and valuable to the firm. When I was accepted into the program, I chose audit as my core service, and tax as my development service.

    For both tax and audit, my assignment diversity was contingent upon the client I worked on, the industry the client operated in, and the tasks needed to be fulfilled by the engagement team. Naturally, I experienced more assignment diversity on my audit engagements, because I worked on many more clients during different stages of the engagement process. On the other hand, I was greatly surprised at the diversity of assignments I worked on in tax. Although I worked on the same client for much of my rotation, my assignments varied day by day, and continuously sparked my interest and curiosity. Overall, I learned many new concepts in tax, and gained a solid understanding of how companies attempt to use the tax code to their advantage. Though I enjoyed SALT, I felt that starting a fulltime position was the best career decision for me.

  • Nicole B.

    Nicole B.

    Chicago BYOIP 2010 Intern
    Audit/ State and Local Tax (SALT) Rotation

    As a college student going into my junior year, the choice between assurance (audit), tax, and advisory was a very daunting one. I elected to interview for a position in tax because it was the only area in which I had any previous work experience. There are many differences that I observed between the two lines and some of the assumptions that I held before my internship were proven false.

    My core service line was federal tax. Tax was also much more dynamic than I had anticipated. I was expecting to complete tax returns, however in addition to 1120, 1040, state, local and amended returns, I had many other assignments. Some of the assignments included deprecation calculations, disposal reports, and account coding. During my five weeks in tax, I was able to participate in four short research projects. My developmental service line was audit. Audit allows for increased client interaction because I was always at my client site. Despite only having two and a half weeks in audit, I was able to correspond and participate in meetings with corporate executives. In just a few weeks in audit, I have been able to learn about my client's industry, investments, accounts receivable, inventory, and many of the small details that allow the company to run. Never did I work on the same type of assignment twice. After much deliberation, I have decided that I would like to pursue a career at KPMG in audit.