Consulting Summer Internship

By Justin Kleifield
Transaction Advisory Services Intern
Chicago, IL

As I finish up my summer as a consulting intern at McGladrey, I would like to reflect upon my time here and how it all started. I was first introduced to McGladrey in the fall of my senior year at one of the finance/accounting career fairs at Indiana University. After having conversations with some of the recruiters and staff members there and giving them my resume they contacted me a few days later to conduct a phone interview. The next step was an in-office interview in October and then I was eventually given an offer in November.  

While at McGladrey I was exposed to a wide range of projects. The highlight though, would have to be conducting my own webcast to 60 members of my group nationwide on the research I had been working on the whole summer. This proved to me that McGladrey truly does treat their interns like full time associates and you are relied upon for important projects. Even as an intern I was included in the week long corporate training which was a great learning and networking experience as well. 

Looking back, the opportunity to be a consulting intern at McGladrey instead of being at strictly a consulting firm was a good one. Since I am an accounting major and McGladrey is a public accounting firm there were many similarities from what I had learned in school to the projects I worked on and I felt I could help in more ways than one. Also, most of the employees here in the consulting group have had audit experience and they were able to share some things with me about their experience doing that as well as some great insight in numerous areas.

Some advice I would like to share with both future interns and new hires is to get involved and meet people in other groups. McGladrey is filled with so many great people that have many years of experience in the industry and are always willing to help. I have established great contacts from being here and look forward to applying their advice to my last year of school and my everyday life.