Really comes down to four

Really comes down to four parts:

1. Behavioural, aka bullshit questions
2. Market questions - trade ideas, whats happening etc
3. brainteasers
4. technical or product questions

1 and 2 are self explanatory. 3 just takes some prep with heard on the street.

4 is where candidates differentiate themselves, and its very hard to BS. If you are actually interested in a product, it will come out in the interview. It is a simple case of making your own path. For someone who nails 1-3, the path is a lot more random to a desk than someone who nails 1-4. As an example going into my SA superdays I knew that options was something that I wanted to focus on, and because i had a genuine interest and was able to convince the interviewer of it, it got flagged throughout the interview process and internship and i was able to get an offer from an options trading desk. Its the one thing i dont think enough candidates do, to really research beforehand and find things that interest them. Everyone comes in wanting to do trading, but if you ask them about which asset class or which desk within an asset class they dont have anything.