Questions to Ask in a Sales and Trading Interview
For students and analyst candidates who reach the end of a superday interview or a desk round and are asked what they would like to know by the trader, salesperson or desk head across from them. The questions follow the conversation: the desk and its products first, then what a junior does all day, how risk and P&L are judged, placement and rotation, and life on the floor, ending with some for the last minutes. The note under each says what a strong or a troubling reply sounds like, and often which seat the question belongs with.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
The desk
What products does your desk cover, and which types of clients trade them most?
Why ask it
Whoever sits down first can answer this, trader, salesperson or desk head, and it saves you from guessing at the business for the rest of the conversation. Listen for instruments and the clients behind them: hedge funds, asset managers, pension funds, corporate treasurers. When the recruiter has already named the product, skip to the second half and ask how the business splits between those kinds of client.
What made you choose this product over the others on the floor?
Why ask it
Some reasons are about the work: the pace, the math, the kind of client on the other end of the phone. Others are an accident of which seat was open the year they joined, and that version shows you how placement really goes at the bank. Have your own reason for wanting this desk ready, because the question tends to come back across the table.
What are you watching most closely in your market this week?
Why ask it
You will usually get an event: a central bank meeting, a data release, an auction, an earnings date, a deal about to price. Write it down, look up what happened that evening and mention it in your thank-you note. Do not volunteer a forecast, and if you are asked for one, give a view, a reason and what would change your mind.
How do the salespeople and the traders on this desk work together on a client order?
Why ask it
Who quotes the price and who speaks to the client is divided differently from bank to bank and from product to product. The answer to hope for walks through one order: who takes the call, who makes the price, who decides how much of the desk's thinking the client gets to hear. Teasing between the two sides is normal. When each blames the other for lost business, remember which of the two seats you are applying for.
How much of the desk's flow is traded electronically now, and what is left for people to do?
Why ask it
It differs a great deal by product. A candid interviewer says which tickets the machines take and where a person still earns the seat: a large order, an illiquid name, a client who wants to talk it through first. Whatever they name is the skill the job will reward, and the natural next question is how a junior learns it.
What has been driving client activity on the desk over the past few months?
Why ask it
Expect 'what do you think?' straight back, so read up on that market the night before and be able to hold a view for two minutes. Strong answers link something that happened in the market to what clients then did about it. 'It has been busy' and nothing more may only mean the trader has one eye on a screen, and the same question usually goes better with a salesperson.
Is the desk mostly a flow business, or does more of the work come from structured trades and financing?
Why ask it
A desk head answers this most easily, and a junior trader may pass, which is fine. Flow desks teach quick pricing and a thick skin. Structured and financing work means longer projects with models and legal documents in them. Neither is the better training, but they suit different temperaments, so decide beforehand which one you are hoping to hear.
How closely does the desk work with research, structuring and the quants?
Why ask it
On some floors a strategist sits a few seats away and writes for the desk's clients. On others research is a separate department, and what may pass between the two is set by the bank and its regulators. Hearing which groups the desk leans on tells you who a junior ends up asking for a model, a chart or a term sheet, and whether a technical background would be put to work.
When the desk has a trade idea, how is it decided which clients hear it?
Why ask it
One for a salesperson. The reply shows how accounts are sorted in practice: who trades that kind of thing, who asked about it last month, who would pick up the phone. Banks also have rules on what may be shared and with whom, so expect those to come up. That sorting is much of what a junior on the sales side spends the first year learning.
A junior's day
What does a normal day look like for a first-year analyst on your desk, from the moment they sit down?
Why ask it
Have them walk it in order: what has to be ready before the morning meeting, what the analyst does while the market is open, and what is left once it shuts. The middle is the part most answers skip, and it tells you whether a junior is watching, fetching or doing. Schedules follow the product and the region, so one desk's day says little about the next one's.
What does an analyst do in the first few months, before being trusted with a price or a client call?
Why ask it
The honest reply is usually modest: reports before the open, spreadsheets kept up to date, trades booked and checked, the lunch order. None of that is a bad sign, because it is how a desk finds out whether you are accurate. What you want to hear is what comes after it and roughly when. An interviewer who cannot say may never have seen a junior through it.
Is there classroom training before analysts sit down on the desk, and what does it cover?
Why ask it
Programs range from several weeks of product classes and exam preparation to a seat on the desk on day one, and a bank can change its own from one year to the next. Whoever joined most recently can tell you what was taught and what they had to pick up alone. Where there is no classroom, the thing to find out is who explains the basics of the product in the first month.
Are there exams or registrations I would need before I could trade or speak to clients, and how much time do people get to prepare?
Why ask it
Which licenses or exams apply depends on the country, the regulator and sometimes the product, so only this bank and this office can tell you. A helpful answer names the requirement, the deadline and whether study time comes out of training or your own evenings. A trader who shrugs has probably just forgotten, and the recruiter will know.
Of the tasks handed to the newest person, which one matters most to you?
Why ask it
Every desk has one chore its seniors quietly depend on: the morning note clients read, the end-of-day check on the book, the spreadsheet behind every price. Whichever it is here, getting that single thing right each day is how a junior gets noticed. Write the answer down, and bring it up again if you meet the same person in a later round.
What do the analysts who get trusted early do that the others do not?
Why ask it
You will mostly hear plain habits: asking a question once and writing down the answer, owning up to an error within minutes, knowing the overnight news before anyone asks. Those can be started before the first day, so check the list against how you work now. 'They just get it' is not an answer, and a request for one example of someone who did usually produces a real one.
On the sales side, how soon does a junior get accounts of their own, and how are they handed over?
Why ask it
For candidates leaning toward sales. A good answer has stages: listening in on calls, covering a senior's smaller accounts while they are away, then a short list of your own with someone watching. 'When somebody leaves' is honest, and it means the timing is out of your hands. How the most recent analyst got theirs is the follow-up.
On the trading side, when does a junior first price a trade or run a small book?
Why ask it
Nobody can promise a date, and it differs by product. Listen for steps: quoting small tickets with a senior checking each one, then a small book inside tight limits. 'It depends on you' is true and not much use. How long it took the last analyst is a fact, and most traders will tell you.
How much coding or spreadsheet building is in the job, and what does the desk run its day on?
Why ask it
Some desks expect juniors to write their own tools, and others live in spreadsheets and a market data terminal. Either reply tells you what to practice before a start date. Be ready to say truthfully how good you are, because the natural next question is whether you can do it.
Who would I sit beside, and who takes the time to explain a trade once it is done?
Why ask it
On a trading floor most of the teaching is overheard, so the seat can matter more than the training program. You are hoping for a name or a role. 'Nobody has time during the day, but we go through it after the close' still counts as a good answer. Silence, or a pointer to an online course, does not.
What mistake do new analysts make most often, and how does it get caught?
Why ask it
Typical ones are a trade booked in the wrong size, a figure passed on unchecked, or something said to a client that should have gone through a senior first. The reassuring reply includes the check that catches it: a second pair of eyes on the ticket, a reconciliation at the end of the day. A desk that cannot name the check is relying on the junior never slipping.
Risk and P&L
How is a junior judged before they have any P&L or clients of their own?
Why ask it
This is your first review described in advance. Expect words like accuracy, reliability and curiosity, then find out whose opinion is collected. When the whole desk has a say, every small errand counts toward it. When one person decides, that is the person who needs to see your work.
How is a trader judged here beyond the P&L number?
Why ask it
Best asked of a desk head or a senior trader. A full answer brings in how the money was made: staying inside limits, looking after client business, helping the rest of the desk. If the number turns out to be the whole story, that is worth knowing too, because it shapes how people treat each other in a bad month.
How is a salesperson's contribution measured when the trade sits in the trader's book?
Why ask it
Each bank has its own way of crediting client business, and the fair follow-up is who settles a disagreement. A clear method, even an imperfect one, leaves people free to spend their energy on clients. A laugh and 'we argue about it' means credit is negotiated, which matters at review time if you are headed for the sales side.
How does the desk think about its risk limits, and what happens when a position gets close to one?
Why ask it
Do not ask for the figures, which they cannot share. You are after the routine: limits everybody knows, and a conversation with the desk head or a risk manager before the line is reached and not after. A trader who talks about limits as an obstacle is showing you the habits a junior beside them would pick up.
How do you decide when to cut a position that is going against you?
Why ask it
Traders tend to enjoy this one, and it can turn the last five minutes into a real conversation. The disciplined version is a level or a loss decided before the trade went on. 'You just feel it' is the answer to be careful with. It is for traders only, and you should expect to be asked what you would do.
Is there a trade from your time on the desk that you still think about?
Why ask it
Most people on a floor have one, a winner or a loser, and can tell it with the client and the size left out. What they pick shows what they value: being right early, getting a client out of a hard spot, an error that changed how they work. Follow the story closely enough to ask one sensible question about it, which is harder than it sounds and gets noticed.
What did the desk do on the last day the market moved sharply against it?
Why ask it
Here you learn how the floor behaves under strain without the word culture coming up. Good accounts have people getting quieter, clients being called, one person making the decisions and a review once it was over. Positions will not be named, and should not be. Be wary when the story centers on whose fault it was.
How much of the risk from client trades is hedged right away, and how much does the desk choose to hold?
Why ask it
A more technical one, so bring it only if you could follow the reply. How much freedom a desk has here depends on the product, the bank's own rules and regulation that differs by country. The answer tells you whether a trader's day is mostly pricing and hedging client business or mostly managing a view of the market.
When a junior has an idea for a trade, what happens to it?
Why ask it
On some desks you write it up, pitch it at the morning meeting and a senior picks it apart, and now and then it reaches clients. On others, ideas from first-years are not expected for a while. Either can be fine. The last analyst idea that was taken up, if the interviewer can recall one, sorts the real answer from the polite one.
Which view did you hold this year that turned out wrong, and what did you take from it?
Why ask it
Being wrong is a daily event in markets, so most people on a floor answer without flinching, and the good ones with some humor. You hear how the person thinks about risk and, by extension, how they would treat a mistake of yours. It needs a little rapport, so leave it out of an interview that has been stiff.
Placement
Are new analysts hired straight onto this desk, or placed after a rotation?
Why ask it
Banks do this differently, and one bank can change it from year to year, so do not assume. On a direct hire, the people interviewing you are your future bosses and their answers carry more weight. With a rotation, the next things to learn are how many desks, how long on each, and who decides at the end.
At what point does an analyst here have to choose between sales and trading?
Why ask it
Some programs want the choice on the application, some after a rotation, and a few leave room to move later. Whichever it is, say which way you lean and why, since 'either' sounds as if you have not thought about the difference. If you truly do not know yet, ask what made the interviewer sure.
When rotations end, how is it decided who goes to which desk?
Why ask it
The usual ingredients are the analyst's preference, which desks asked for them and how many seats exist that year. An interviewer who admits that desks pick people as much as people pick desks is giving you the working version. The useful follow-up is what happens to someone whose first choice has no opening.
What do interns do while they sit with the desk, and how is the return offer decided?
Why ask it
Shadowing, a project and a trade pitch at the end are common parts of a summer, but each bank sets its own format. The second half matters more to an intern: whose opinion is collected, and whether you would hear how you are doing before the final week. Full-time candidates can leave this one out.
How many seats is the desk looking to fill this year, and what opened them up?
Why ask it
The reasons tend to be the yearly intake, an analyst who moved up or out, or a product that is growing. Growth usually means more to do and more to learn. After a departure, it is fair to ask where the person went. With a yearly intake, the number that matters is how many of the class usually end up on this floor.
What does the path from analyst to associate and beyond look like on this desk?
Why ask it
Titles and timelines vary by bank, so ask for the interviewer's own steps and how long each took. Listen for how the job changed at each one: from supporting a book or an account list, to running one, to managing the people who do. A path nobody can describe is one nobody has recently walked.
How often do people move between sales and trading, or to another product, after a couple of years?
Why ask it
Products have busy years and thin ones, so it is reasonable to want to know whether people can move. Ask it about the floor as a whole, with a desk head or the recruiter, so that it does not sound like doubt about this product. The answer you can rely on is a named person who moved and who arranged it.
How long have most people on the desk been in their seats?
Why ask it
Long-serving seniors make good teachers, but accounts and books come free less often under them. A younger desk hands over responsibility sooner and has fewer people to learn from. Decide which trade-off you prefer before you ask, and notice whether the interviewer sounds proud or tired when answering.
The floor
What time does the desk get in, and when do people usually leave once the market closes?
Why ask it
A floor keeps the market's hours, so this is a fair thing to ask here as long as it sounds like curiosity about the routine. Start and finish times depend on the product and the office, and the evenings that run late tend to have a cause worth hearing: a heavy day's tickets to check, a deal pricing, a client event. Put it to each desk you meet, since their answers will differ.
What is the desk like on a quiet day compared with a busy one?
Why ask it
Boredom is as much a part of the job as stress, and candidates rarely ask about it. Listen for what the quiet days are for: teaching, visiting clients, building a tool someone has wanted for months. If the answer is that people drift off and the junior watches the screens alone, ask when the teaching happens.
What is the hardest part of your seat that people outside the floor do not see?
Why ask it
A trader might name the days when nothing works and the screen still has to be watched. A salesperson might talk about the client who goes quiet, or having to carry bad news about a price. Do not rush to say you could handle it. One follow-up about how they learned to live with it is the better reply.
How do people on the desk speak to each other when a trade goes wrong?
Why ask it
Floors are blunt, and blunt is not the same as unkind. The distinction to listen for is whether a mistake is named once, fixed and dropped, or brought up again for weeks. The newest analyst on the desk hears it at the closest range, so theirs is the account to go by.
Apart from being told on the spot, when does a junior hear how they are doing?
Why ask it
Instant correction is the default on a trading floor, and it is useful but narrow. You are asking about the other kind: a regular conversation with a named person about how the year is going. Where the year-end review is the only one, an analyst can tell you how they knew where they stood in between.
How much of the team is on the floor every day?
Why ask it
Whether sales and trading staff may work from anywhere else is set by the bank's own rules and by regulation that differs from country to country. For a junior, a full row of seats means more to overhear. A half-empty row deserves a follow-up about who would actually be next to you.
When someone is away, who covers their book or their clients?
Why ask it
It gets at time off without the word vacation. Some banks require people in these roles to take a stretch of leave away from the desk, so the practice here is worth hearing. Covering for a senior is often a junior's first real responsibility, which makes the answer a preview of how you would be tested.
Does the desk work with colleagues in other regions, and what gets handed over at the end of the day?
Why ask it
Many products trade across time zones, and somebody has to pass on positions, client orders or a written summary. On plenty of desks the junior drafts that summary, which is a real responsibility and a reason to stay until it is done. If nothing is handed over, the thing to find out is who watches the market overnight.
How much of the sales job happens away from the floor, at client visits, dinners and conferences?
Why ask it
For the sales seat. Entertaining rules and budgets are set by each bank and by its clients' own policies, so the amount varies widely. What a junior wants to learn is when they start going along, and whether evenings come on top of the full day or in place of part of it. A trader will have a shorter answer, and it is still worth hearing how often they meet the clients they price for.
Closing
What are you hoping to find in the person who gets this seat?
Why ask it
A trader may say quick arithmetic and honesty about what you do not know. A salesperson may say energy and curiosity about clients. Whatever the list, it is most useful heard before lunch on a superday, when there are still conversations ahead in which to show it. By the last interview of the day, choose a different closer.
What do you read or check first every morning, and what should I be following to be ready for this seat?
Why ask it
A useful reply is specific: a data release, a named newsletter, the desk's own morning commentary. Start following it that week, so that in a later round or on the first day you can talk about it as a habit and not as homework. Told to 'just follow the markets', ask which single number they would look at first.
Is there an answer I gave today that you would like me to take another run at?
Why ask it
These interviews are full of mental math, brainteasers and market questions, and nearly everyone fumbles one. Asking for a second attempt shows you can come back from a miss, which the job asks of people most days. Keep the retry to a few sentences. If they say no, thank them and leave it there.
Would it be useful if I talked you through a trade idea I have been following?
Why ask it
Only for when you have prepared one, nobody has asked for it and the interviewer still has a few minutes. Keep it to a minute: the idea, the reason, what could go wrong and where you would get out. Expect every part to be challenged. How you take the challenge, holding a point politely or conceding a fair one, counts for as much as the idea.
What do you know about this job now that you wish someone had told you in your first year?
Why ask it
People on a floor are often generous with advice once the formal part is over. Answers might run from the practical, such as keeping a notebook of every term you had to ask about, to the personal, such as not taking a bad day home. It also ends the conversation on their experience, which is a warmer place to stop than logistics.
How is the decision made after a superday, and when do candidates usually hear?
Why ask it
The recruiter is the right person for this, and the answer differs from bank to bank: some collect a score from each interviewer, and others have the desks rank the candidates they met. With a trader, keep it to the second half and ask it once. Knowing the timing tells you when a polite follow-up is reasonable and when it is merely early.
Asking your questions at a desk interview or superday
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before the day
Find out how the bank places people
Some banks hire into a pool and place analysts after rotations. Others interview for a named desk. Ask the recruiter which it is before the day, because it changes what matters: for a direct seat the questions under A junior's day and The floor describe your actual job, and on a rotational program the ones under Placement come first. Programs differ by bank, region and year.
Be able to say what the desk trades
If you know which desks you will meet, learn each product well enough to say in one sentence what it is and who buys it. The first question under The desk is for filling in what you could not find, not for starting from nothing. If the schedule only says 'sales and trading', prepare one market you can talk about and say plainly that it is the one you have followed.
Have a view before you ask for theirs
Any question about client activity or a market can be turned around with 'what do you think?'. Prepare one view on a market the desk trades, the reason for it and what would change your mind. Leave out any market question you could not talk about for two minutes yourself.
Write each question as one line
Interviews on or near a floor are short and can end early when the market moves, so there may be time for one question and not five. Write each as a single sentence you could say in one breath, and decide in advance which one you would ask if you only got one.
Which questions for which seat
A trader
Traders price trades and carry the risk. The questions under Risk and P&L are theirs: limits, when to cut a position, how much is hedged, the trade they still think about. Ask what they are watching in the market too, as long as you can hold up your end when it comes back.
A salesperson
Salespeople own the client relationship. Ask what has been driving client activity, which clients hear an idea first, how accounts reach a junior, how credit is shared with the trading book and how much of the job happens away from the floor.
A desk head
The desk head can say what the business is for, how many seats there are and how placement works. Questions about flow against structured work, how a trader or a junior is judged, and the path upward get their fullest answers here. Daily chores are better asked of someone closer to them.
The analyst or associate
The most junior person you meet knows the day, the training, the feedback and how people speak to each other better than anyone else on the schedule. Nearly all of A junior's day and The floor belongs with them. Put one of those questions to a senior person as well: where the two accounts match you can rely on them, and where they differ you have something to ask about if an offer comes.
When the schedule does not say
Schedules change on the morning, and a name on a list may not tell you the seat. The first three questions on this page suit anyone, and the answer to the first tells you which seat you are talking to.
At the desk
Ask in a sentence, then stop
People on a trading floor speak in short bursts and lose patience with a long windup. Leave out the preamble about what you have read. Ask, then let the silence sit while they think.
Expect to be interrupted
If you are interviewed at the desk, or the trader has a screen in view, a phone call or a price may cut across your question. Wait, and pick up where the answer stopped instead of starting again. Being unbothered by the pause is noticed.
Ask for one trade, one client, one day
A question about how the desk handles a bad day invites a principle. Asking about the most recent one brings out a morning, a market and what people did. Most of the questions under Risk and P&L and The floor improve this way, and an answer with 'last Thursday' in it describes something that happened.
Say so when you do not follow
If an answer uses a term you do not know, ask what it means. Nodding along is the riskier choice, because the next question may be to explain it back, and a floor has little patience for someone who pretends to know a number.
Notice how losses and mistakes are told
The stories about a bad day, a wrong view or a junior's booking error show you the desk's temper better than any direct question about culture. Calm, specific and finished is the good version. A story that is really about who was to blame is the one to remember.
Keep notes in case you are asked to rank
Some banks ask candidates which desks they preferred, just as desks are asked about candidates. After each conversation write down the person's product, one thing they said and how the seat sounded to you. By the last interview of a long day the desks blur, and those lines are what you will choose from.
What to leave out
Positions, profits and client names
Do not ask what the desk is long or short, how much it made last year or which funds it covers by name. The interviewer cannot tell you, and asking suggests you do not know that. Ask about kinds of client, kinds of risk and how decisions get made.
Pay, and where you would go next
The people across from you rarely set an analyst's pay, and how a bonus is decided is each bank's own business and differs by level and country. That makes it the recruiter's to explain once there is an offer. Asking how people leave for a hedge fund or an asset manager tells the desk the seat is a stop on your way. The questions about how people are judged, and those under Placement about promotion and moving between products, cover both from inside the bank.
A trade pitch dressed as a question
A question built to show off your view on rates or a stock is easy to spot, and it invites a cross-examination you did not prepare for. If you have an idea ready and nobody has asked for it, offer it openly with the question under Closing, and take no for an answer.
A question whose answer you could not follow
Asking about hedging or electronic trading in terms you picked up the night before is a risk, because the reply will come in the same terms and a follow-up is expected. Ask the plain version. A plain 'I do not know that yet' goes down better on a floor than a borrowed phrase.