What can traders hired out of college expect to be doing?

First of all, you can't be hired out of college as a trader. Instead, you will be hired as an analyst and go through on the job training where you can expect to be exposed to several trading products and desks before placement onto one of these. In some cases new analysts will be preplaced to desks and bypass the exposure/rotation period of their training because of prior work experience or internships. For your case, maybe if you had a solid finance and math background and had worked with cd's in one form or another you may be pre-placed on the cd desk. Once on a desk, you will do basic modeling for pricings and such related things for the actual traders of the firm (what you want to become) and, in essence, learn the ropes. You will work usually two to three years as an analyst and at the end of that particular period will either exit the firm, go back to school for MBA, or be promoted to an associate and possibly be given your own desk/book to cover...then, and only then, will we begin to talk about what a trader does. You can expect to work anywhere from 45-60 hrs/week as a trading analyst. You will be paid nearly the same as your counterpart in the IBD, although this is variable to your particular desk/product line's performance. Years down the line, however, you can expect to blow those counterparts out of the water in compensation with levels anywhere from 30 to 60 million a year, although this is pending and determined by the fact that you are a complete genius at what you do.