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Business Brief
Updated: June 4, 2012 8:04AM
CPA Firms start new internship program
Five suburban CPA firms, including Skokie-based The Hechtman Group Ltd. and Silver, Lerner, Schwartz & Fertel, have created a way to increase knowledge of their profession and help students, too.
A new type of internship program will debut this summer under the tutelage of the firms, Weltman Bernfield, Kaplan + Liss LLP of Evanston; and Porte Brown LLC of Elk Grove Village; as well as The Hechtman Group Ltd. and Silver, Lerner, Schwartz & Fertel.
Unlike traditional internship programs that provide individual students several weeks of work at a company, the internship program will offer hands-on QuickBooks training, job shadowing, networking with company leaders, and presentations by industry insiders. The eight students who were selected through a competitive application process, will receive a $2,500 college scholarship for the eight-week program.
“We put together a training program to teach the interns what they need to know to succeed, at firms like ours or other similar environments,” said Allen Bolnick, managing partner at Weltman Bernfield, the certified public accounting and business consulting firm that initiated the internship program.
The CPA firms and the interns are not the only ones excited about the new endeavor, the accounting industry has offered support. Intuit has donated copies of the QuickBooks Fundamentals Learning Guide 2012 for the interns to use and AHI has contributed training manuals. The Illinois CPA society has donated a student membership to each intern for the duration of their college years.
