Finally… After 5 to 6 months of internships, I’ve managed to survive over it, and being able to update my inactive blog…
Hi
everyone… I believe every degree in the universities certainly do have 1
semester dedicated for an industrial training. Even if some of the degree
programs doesn’t have an internship semester, but they still enough their
students respectively to find for 1 or 2 internship placements in between the
semester breaks as well. The internship period usually lasted for about 2
months, the shortest one to 5 or 6 months. However, recently as well some
universities, even UKM itself certainly does offer an option of choice of
making it to 2 semesters worth of duration – which is about a year (12 months).
Regardless of the duration, it is definitely industrial training is set to
expose the students to the respective industry and real working world. Besides,
through the industrial training, the students are said to be somehow directly
or indirectly equipped with the relevant skills from that industry, and
eventually being prepared for the future job market once graduated from the
alma mater. Meanwhile, I, myself have just passed through the internship
semester, and I did like to share some of my experiences in being an audit
intern, as well as my thoughts after the internship.
For starters, in the beginning, my internship journey was not that smooth sailing. My internship was supposedly starting by 2nd of August of 2021, however, the respective audit firm, one of the mid-tier audit firms forced to defer my joining date for 2 months, from August 2021 to October 2022. It is understandable for the audit firm to defer the joining date during that occasion because of there was a guideline set by government to limit inpercentage of number of employees in the office compound to curb the spread ofCOVID-19 as part of the National Recovery Plan (Phase 3 that time*). However, the internship still couldn’t be deferred for a long time because there was an academic semester right after the internship semester. Even in between there was a month worth semester break, but still it was needed to take into account of the time to marking and grading of the internship report, and evaluation forms. This in turn has sparked the anxiousness among the students who got the internship placement there, including me. In the meantime, the authority of UKM – Program of Accounting in Faculty of Economy and Business has contacted and liaised with the HR authority of that mid-tier audit firm. The suggestion was that the UKM authority want to make it start by September, and unfortunately seemingly HR didn’t want to bother to make the starting date of internship as early as possible. Henceforth, we, the students that time had to find for another internship placement with the starting date by September. As for my case, I have managed to get 2 internships offer from 2 different audit firms in Puchong, Selangor. Although 2 of that audit firms were located in Puchong, but I sought to choose for the nearest to home, and being easily accessible to public transport one. Eventually, I have chosen for the nearest one to my home. Thus, my official internship was from 1st of September 2021 to 31st of January 2022, with the unchanged ending date of the internship. It is a sign of relief for me after settling this internship crisis, now it is the time to see the real experience of my internship.
Overall,
my internship life in the firm which located in Puchong was good. I was able to
get exposure of the full cycle audit through some of the small companies or
dormant companies’ assignment. Since these companies have inactive trading or
dormant status or trading with only their parent company, hence the working
papers of the companies were also being easily to understand. Meanwhile, I’d
also being assigned to assist some audit staffs, or known as seniors there in
doing audit assignment for relatively bigger companies, or helping audit manager
in doing audit for potential public listed company, apart from doing audit for
those small companies. Assisting the seniors or manager was mainly on like
doing some repetitive tasks, such as listing for sample selection, vouching on
the selected sample, doing the other tests like cut-off test, and aging test
for the receivables, and payables, sending balance confirmation letters, filling
up each section of the lead schedules, draft report and eventually do filing. I
remembered vividly the importance of double checking in audit working paper,
especially in doing listing for sample selection. This is because of once
sample selection is wrong, the selected sample for vouching, such as test of
details will be wrong too. Meanwhile, it is also equally important for the
other parts of audit working paper, as well as finalizing report and filing
part too. For example, there is a procedure there to let audit manager check
multiple times of draft audit report before sending the draft to client for
comment and approval. After the client’s approval, then there is session to let
other staffs to do casting and cross-checking before printing
copies of audited report out. The audited report will be printed out in
numerous copies to the authority such as Company Secretary (for
Commission of Companies Malaysia, SSM purpose), Client itself (for loan
approval from bank in the near-future), Tax authority, and Auditor
authority as well. Apart from that, I did also sometimes get asked to help in
doing research relating to accounting standards. One of the accounting
standards, I was asked to do brief research was on IFRS 9 Financial Instruments
– about the recognition and measurement of the debt instrument and equity
instrument, as well as the aspect of Expected Credit Losses (ECL). On top of
that, I was also asked to research on Labuan Tax Act 1990, as well as Corporate
Governance 2021. Lastly, the manager did assign me to do slides for his presentation on auditor
duties in Companies Act 2016, Capital Market Services Act 2007, Financial
Reporting act 1997, and Financial Services act 2013, and enhanced IPO framework
(Reporting Accountants for IPO). Well, in short, these were my internship tasks
throughout 5 months there. The sharing of the tasks of mine during internship
were just a tip of an iceberg, and I couldn’t share that much as it was a very
long story (if you still want to know more, then can refer from my internship
report…). Right after knowing about the basic tasks in the industrial training,
then it is the time to know about the office culture.
The office culture and environment were basically amicable. The staffs there were friendly and nice in personality, as well as willing to teach the interns. Sometimes I got chance to join with them for lunch, and had some small talks as well. Besides, for my internship experience there, I usually went back home by 5:30pm or 6pm that timing, except for few occasions where I was rushing to complete some filing tasks which were given nearing the end of the working hours. Meanwhile, the time for me to go back home from work vary in between 6:30pm to 7:30pm, if I went for fieldwork with colleagues and/or manager, as the traffic condition varies from mildly to extremely congested. Although, most of the I was able to back home on time, but I still sometimes would spare time to work from home at night. Not only that I did standby to work anytime during weekend too, for instance, I recalled that I was called to work when I was still outside. Those feeling was absolutely frustrated, and hopeless, nevertheless what to do about it then? I just embraced through it, even though I was swearing deep down in my heart. Perhaps, those are basically part and parcel of working life. Aside of the working hours or working aspect, the company did also have conducted activities, such as in-house training from time to time, annually strategic and operation review workshop, annual dinner, and annual company trip as well. Through these series of activities, it could be said that the company was vying to mingle every employee as a team to excel and achieve the objective of that company. Indeed, throughout my internship there, I can feel the audit firm’s ambition to grow bigger in business, even it is still considering a small audit firm for now. Speaking of the outside work activity as well, I was able to have chance to join appreciation meal with the manager and the other staff and interns before I end my internship. Appreciation meal is known as an appreciation of the contribution of the staffs in doing audit for a company – parent company and subsidiary ones. In short, overall, my internship life in the firm was still interesting, even though the tasks there given, for me, consider to be a lot.
Now,
here is the takeaway from my internship. Obviously, the internship semester has
exposed me to the practical and real working world especially in the auditing field.
Apart from the industrial exposure, I got to learn and improve skills which
required for working world, such as time management skill, and communication
skill. Indeed, I also got learn that sometimes I got to figure out and solve
the problem by myself, as some staffs were too busy on their own tasks. Lastly,
I also noticed that the staffs and manager there were totally good in handling
with stress of work, and multitasking. Perhaps, what I did during internship is
just a tip of an iceberg. In the future, after graduation, I may need to be in
that part of the working culture… No… What to do? Accept the fate then…
That’s
summary for my Semester 7 – Internship semester. Thanks for sparing out some
time to read this blogpost. Thank you.
