At 19:20 on 23 March, the third Salon was held by the Youth League General Branch and the Student Union of the International College at the Dream Room of the library of Xiang’an Campus. Many students of Finance and Accounting were attracted by the sharing from their senior schoolmates about their internship in the Big Four: PwC, DTT, KPMG and EY as well as their application processes.

The first invited lecturer was Zeng Chengjun. He introduced his experience of the Winter-vacation Intern Program at PwC Shenzhen. In addition tothe corporate culture and staff welfare of PwC, he told the audience many details of his preparations, including online application, interview, dressing and training. Interns are usually assigned such duties as Confirmation, Audit Working Paper, CT Work, and Physical Examination at PwC, he told the audience. He encouraged the younger studentsto work hard and show initiative during the internship, which might help them skip such stages as written examination and online application and get the chance of interview directly when they apply for formal positions at the Big Four.

The next speaker was Cao Menghuan who worked as intern at EY Shenzhen. She shared how she made preparations for her interview, e.g., writing the Chinese and English versions of her personal statement, learning experience from the job-application websites, preconceiving the role she would play before the team interview, and trying to recommend herself by telling the interviewer that “while I am not so good at…, I am good at…”She reminded the audience that such case analysis tools as SWOT, 4P and 4C should be mastered and also recommended some books.

Su Junteng, who worked at DTT Xiamen gave all the details about his application and internship. He said frankly that for interns, the most possible jobs are routine and relatively simple duties around annual auditing or listing auditing. He emphasized the importance of communicative ability, especially when contacting the clients, and said preparations are necessary before each phone call

The last speaker was Cheng Siyao, who worked at EY Shenzhen from 11 January to 5 February this year. She introduced the internal competition mechanism of the Big Four and her job duties. Her feeling was that the Big Four have good atmosphere and provide great development potential. The mass information they deal with gives the workers good chance to improve their professional skills as well as other key skills such as communication, time management and multitasking. She suggested that the students learn to work under pressure, communicate with the employers and clients and meet the deadline.

The last was the active interaction stage, in which various questions were put forward by the listeners and well answered by the lecturers.