Hello again everyone! I’m back for my third and midpoint blog post. In this post, I wanted to speak on previous projects of mine and their similarity to my current internship.

The experiences that I believe helped me receive my internship came from my certificate program in leadership and ethics (CPLE) at Pitt Business. During my program, I have worked on consulting-based projects that resulted in several deliverables and a presentation to faculty members. These projects last an entire semester and usually consist of yourself and three other group members. For example, my favorite project out of the three that I have completed had the mission task of finding new opportunities for CPLE students. These opportunities would be summer internships exclusively for students in the program to apply. To find these internships our team focused on researching Pittsburgh companies in the area and reaching out to key people in hiring practices. During our project, we usually had a meeting with our advisor every two weeks and for the most part, it was individual work within our team. The project ended with a presentation to one of our center’s funders and our advising faculty.

In comparison to my internship, this project was much more independent and there was not a set list of instructions to complete our task. The difference in working at a large, old company such as Ernst & Young is that there are many methods and rules already in place for most functions of the firm. This provides much-needed structure to my internship, but with the company also being global there are still many surprises in our work.

An example of a surprise my team had was as a result of a webinar that thousands of technology risk personnel participated in. The webinar, in my opinion, dragged on for too long but my manager was captivated by it. She said it was the most interesting one she’d watched in years. It lead to several new forms we would utilize for

upcoming audits. My team’s audit specialization is the technology systems and controls that produce a company’s financial statements. These new forms would allow us to better deliver the information we’d gathered to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). The PCAOB verifies that financial statements are not misguided or false and provides a safeguard to investors. In the world of audit, a new form can be one of the most exciting events of the year.

I wanted to speak about my expectations for the internship and how they have changed during the last two

months. From my offer letter to the beginning of my training, my internship was said to be entirely in-person but after training began it quickly became relevant that going to the office would depend on our assigned team. My team preferred a hybrid model with two days of in-office work and three virtual. I always appreciate being able to get up later for work and avoid commuting time but I still feel a gap in social interaction with the hybrid model. 

Today is my first day on a new team and client! I’ll be sure to update more on that in my next post!