How to Prepare for a Structured Products and Sales & Trading Interview

Written by the FinLingo team. Built by a markets practitioner. About · Last updated: April 17, 2026

Front-office interviews for structured products desks, sales & trading rotations, and cross-asset roles test a different skill set than investment banking interviews. There are no DCF models or merger accretion analyses. Instead, interviewers want to know if you can think about products, risk, and markets — the three things that drive revenue on a trading floor. The good news: the technical bar is learnable in weeks, not months, if you know what to focus on.

The Four Pillars Interviewers Test

Every structured products or S&T interview, whether at a bulge bracket or a boutique, probes four areas. First, market intuition: can you discuss what is happening in rates, equities, or credit markets today and form a coherent view? Second, product knowledge: can you explain how an autocall works, what a reverse convertible pays, or why a client would buy a capital-protected note? Third, Greeks and risk: do you understand delta, gamma, vega, theta, and rho well enough to reason about hedging? Fourth, commercial awareness: do you understand who buys these products, why, and how the bank earns its margin?

Common Technical Questions

Be prepared for these questions — they appear in nearly every front-office interview cycle:

• Explain put-call parity. C − P = S − Ke^−rT. Know what each term represents and why it holds by no-arbitrage.
• What is convexity? The non-linear relationship between bond price and yield. Positive convexity means the price gains from a yield drop exceed the losses from an equal yield rise.
• How does an autocall work? A structured note that automatically redeems above par if the underlying is above a barrier on an observation date, paying a coupon. If it never autocalls, the investor is exposed to downside at maturity.
• What happens to gamma near expiry? ATM gamma spikes — the option becomes extremely sensitive to small moves in the underlying. This creates pin risk and makes hedging expensive.
• What drives the volatility smile? The market prices tail risk (jumps, crashes) that Black-Scholes assumes away. OTM puts are bid for downside protection, pushing up their implied vol relative to ATM.

Structured Products vs IBD Interviews

Investment banking division interviews focus on accounting, valuation (DCF, comparable companies, precedent transactions), and M&A mechanics. Sales & trading interviews share almost none of this content. Instead, you need to understand financial products as instruments — what they pay, what risks they embed, and how they are priced. A structured products interviewer will never ask you to walk through a three-statement model. They will ask you to decompose a product into its component options, explain which Greek dominates the risk, and discuss why a wealth management client would prefer it to buying the underlying directly.

The 60-Second Product Pitch

One of the most effective preparation exercises is the 60-second product pitch. For any product — an autocall, a reverse convertible, a variance swap, a CMS spread option — practise answering four questions in under a minute:

• Who buys it? (Retail via private bank? Institutional? Insurer?)
• What market view does it express? (Range-bound equity? Falling vol? Steepening curve?)
• What risks does the buyer accept? (Downside equity, credit of the issuer, early redemption?)
• How does the bank make money? (Bid-offer on the embedded options, funding advantage, hedging the Greeks?)

If you can pitch five products this way, you are better prepared than most candidates.

“FinLingo gave me the technical foundation I needed to walk into my interviews at SG with confidence. The structured products and Greeks content is exactly what gets tested — and I finally understood it properly, not just memorised it.”

Mathis Chéreau — Cross Asset Structured Products Sales Assistant, Société Générale | IÉSEG School of Management

“I used FinLingo to build my knowledge of derivatives and structured products before my alternance at SGCIB. The way concepts are explained — from intuition to practice — is exactly how you need to think on a cross-asset sales desk.”

Alzira Ferreira — Cross Asset Structured Products Sales, Société Générale | Mines Paris - PSL × Albert School

FinLingo covers every topic tested in these interviews — from cash instruments through options, Greeks, pricing, and structured products — across 342 lessons organised by difficulty level. Level 1 is free and covers the foundations that every candidate needs.