When you are at Big 4, you will specialize in specific type of clients for Financial Services (i.e. – big banks, hedge funds, private equities, broker dealers, insurance companies, REIT, etc etc). If you are looking to try hedge fund, and then broker dealers, and then private equities, then try mid size firms or smaller firms (although none of those firms are likely to have big investment banks as clients).
For exit opportunities, everyone uses recruiters to find exit ops (at least in NYC, they do). Recruiters will test your technical knowledge before they send you to interviews.
Also, there's a difference between working at a hedge fund and working at a fund admin. Most hedge funds use fund admins (think Citco, BNY Mellon, Citi, SS&C, etc) to do actual bookkeeping and other backoffice accounting stuff. If you get hired directly to a hedge fund or other FS, you might be doing other type of work (regulatory compliance, internal accounting support, analysis, etc). “Busy season” depends on if you work at fund admin or actual FS. Fund admins are busy at month end as you have to close books for your client. But your busy season is usually when your client's fiscal year ends because you have to prepare audit packages, provide schedules to the client's auditors until the financials are issued. Summer, I hear is the slow season. If you work at actual FS, you will definitely have month end close and crunch time during the audit and before the financials are issued. If your FS is public or subject to SEC reporting, then you will be busy whenever those reports are due.
FAR - 86
REG - 85
BEC - 90
AUD - 84
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