Tonight was the USC Leventhal School of Accounting's Spring 2011 Meet the Firms at the California Science Center. Meet the Firms is the biggest recruiting event for accounting students held each semester, where almost all of the accounting firms in Los Angeles bring their recruiters and professionals to network with USC's accounting students.
This semester's Meet the Firms was the first time I was not recruiting, since most of us juniors have already secured our summer internships. All the focus of recruiting this spring will be on the sophomores, who are starting their recruiting for internships for Summer 2012. In order to recruit for next summer's internship, they are encouraged to start by recruiting for this summer's summer leadership programs, which are held by all of the Big 4, as well as several mid-tier firms.
Because the recruiting timeline has changed dramatically in LA, it is even more crucial for sophomores to begin recruiting now. By the end of next semester (Fall 2011), they will have (hopefully/probably) secured their internships for the following summer. This means that if they do not start recruiting now, they will have to cram everything into next semester - learning more about the accounting career, meeting professionals from all the different firms, figuring out which firms they like best, and then applying and interviewing (2 rounds) for the firms. And do not forget that they will still have to balance the hundreds of recruiting dinners/lunches/socials with schoolwork and other involvement...
If they do not start learning about the different firms now and establishing relationships with the professionals and recruiters, it will be very hard for them to decipher which firm they want to start their career at - which is essentially what we decide when we choose where to do our summer internship, since that will translate into a full-time offer (about 95% of the time, or so the recruiters say).
The sophomores who are on top of their game and already interviewing for the summer leadership programs have a huge advantage because the recruiting attention is all on them. For those sophomores who are on the regular path and have not yet learned about the recruiting process for accounting, it will be a very difficult fall semester.
