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Using Interns for Your CPA Firm During the Busy Tax Season

December 10th, 2009 Brian O'Connell No Comments

As a CPA, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to get a helping hand when you need it? Consider utilizing interns as part of your accounting office to solve your work challenges and save time.

CPA Interns need experience, you need help, time and value. Interns are a great way to get more time during the busy season. They gain valuable work experience while you get the needed help during a busy time of the year. Another great value is that most of the time the help they offer is free as they are gaining college credit as their compensation.

Offset the busy tax season by hiring an intern.

Analyze work done on a regular basis. Review your daily workload. Analyze it to find tasks that could be done by an intern with minimial training. Tasks like appointment setting, information gathering, data entry and basic paperwork could be done by an intern.

Calculate. Calculate how long it would take you to do it. Add extra time for a person with less experience to get a realistic idea of how much work an intern could accomplish in the 10-20 hours a week you’ll get from them.

Job description. Based on the analysis of the work you have write a quick job description. Be brief, to the point, yet informative enough for the person looking.

Contact local university. Go through some of your local universities to find college students looking for an internship. You can coordinate with people at the university. Take a look at their transcripts, even those classes outside of the usual accounting.

Interview. No search is complete without an interview. Instead of doing the usual interview, you might consider them shadowing another person in your CPA firm for a certain period of time doing a variety of tasks. This can actually provide you with hands on feedback that the usual questions might miss.

If you have never used interns before you might consider trying them before going into a busy season. There are certain tasks that they can do that help offset your busy tax season. At the same time you are helping someone further on their new career path. Who knows you may even find a person you want to hire permanently.

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