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He is in charge of operations and will be in charge of making everything run smoothly, from staffing etc...
He will be asking personality questions, motivational questions and hardly any technical questions.
Similar to @George Clutney's view, the IBD COO role I've seen is about keeping the machine running. Keeping the IBD's accounts under control, budgeting, chasing fees, monitoring and managing expenses, keeping oversight on staff hires/fires, liaising with many central teams etc.
All the sort of stuff that keeps a business machine oiled and operating.
Upsides is you get more insight into how an IBD operates as a business and the strategic perspective, often involving access to big boy conversations and meetings that a regular investment banker often won't see.
Downside is that you can be front office middle office in many ways. You're not client facing, you're not bringing in revenue and a lot of your job is more about improving margins for the IBD. Which means you're the annoying guy telling BSD relationship bankers that they're charging too much to their corporate Amex, breaching expense policies with corporate gifts, etc. You are the messenger of constraint and discipline on BSDs who just want to be free to make money.
The upside presents some mitigant to the downside, in that bankers know that you have access to office information/gossip they are often interested in, plus you can be a source of information on which way the wind is blowing.
Thanks for the comments so far - Just to point out the SA position is for an IBD Generalist position and not an operational role, which is also one of the reasons why I was a bit perplexed I was interviewing with a COO.
The COO is still a working member of the team.
At some firms the COO will cover a few client accounts themselves (usually at the ED/Director level), some firms also said level (ED/Director) assume the COO role for a year or two and then rotate back into full time client coverage.
It is not always a pure ops role, depends on the bank.
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