I applied through college or university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Bloomberg in Mar 2011
Interview
Submitted resume at career fair, received an email for on campus interview. Interview consisted of a short simple 15 minute interview in the morn, followed by a longer hour + session in the afternoon. The afternoon session consisted of two different interviews. Morning interview was a simple coding example, afternoon inteview was average. In restrospect, it was kinda fun or it would be in a class or other setting. At this point all questions are from glassdoor, careercup or programming interviews.
Got an email for another round, but other obligations made that impossible, therefore I got an onsite interview.
Onsite consisted of one hour with two developers, where they asked me about my research/programming experience. They left to confer with my recruiter, about ten minutes later I had a somewhat hostile one hour interview with an employee, who eventually told me he was a manager. I was asked a few behavioural questions; Are you ready to leave? Did you enjoy the easy questions? What are you looking for in a job? Followed by a coding question. After which he asked if I had any questions about Bloomberg, after a short discussion he left. About 15 minutes later the recruiter showed up and did the HR run through, after which she showed me out.
Got an odd vibe from Bloomberg, like my fly was open or I was the annoying talkative dude on the plane. Doubly weird because everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
write a method/function to find the root of a function?
Eventually simplified to write a binary search based function to find the square root of a number
I applied through college or university. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Bloomberg (Indianapolis, IN) in Feb 2019
Interview
They had info session at school. I submitted my resume online and got the on-campus interview. The interview is 1 hour. Two engineers are the interviewer. Small talk at the beginning. Ask 1 or 2 questions about the resume. And then ask two technical questions. I finished the first one. But I did't have enough time to completed the second question. The first one is a string question. The second one is a tree question.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Bloomberg (London, England) in Dec 2018
Interview
It was a very candidate-friendly interview process, had flexible on-site dates. Amazingly quick feedback. Overall a great experience.
Technical phone screen with an engineer (2 simple/average coding questions)
On-site (technical and behavioral rounds)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Simple/average coding questions. Understanding recursion, stack, and heap, some basic C++ features, data structures characteristics
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Bloomberg (New York, NY) in Nov 2016
Interview
- There was one phone interview with a Bloomberg engineer.
- The onsite interview started with a so called tour of Bloomberg but abruptly ended with a museum of their colorful terminals. It was over in 5 minutes. The group of interviewees laughed a little when it ended.
- 2 rounds of technical interviews with a break of ~20 minutes. Found it easy. Mix of algorithm and design questions. All interviewers look satisfied when they left me.
- HR and recruiter forget that I exist. Forget to contact me for the next 40 minutes or so. I go to their front desk to inquire whether there are more rounds.
- HR appears slightly irritated but is polite. Next 30 minutes, HR tries to understand why after 6+ years of computer science education and working for a couple of years I "chose" to be a software engineer. Does not want to hear technical stuff. Had a hard time believing I could fit the role. I wondered whether I should have taken Psychology and then become a recruiter so I could judge potential candidates of a different discipline.
- At the end of the interview, was asked to "patiently" wait for the next round. Within 5 minutes, one more guy turns up and says the conference room is booked. Was once again asked to goto the front desk. Bloomberg office is huge and not all elevators goto front desk. :-( Reach somehow.
- Once again try telling the front desk people that I have an interview. Give the name of the host. Host appears after 15 minutes. Asks how the interviews are going.
I say "not that great". Asks whether - "Do you want to stay?". I lower my head and say "yes".
- In the conference room, realizes that the manager is out of office and the manager does not have my resume. Arranges a video conference. Asks the manager over conference to not keep him "busy" since he has a flight in flat 2.5 hours.
- Manager tries to understand how I ended up interviewing at Bloomberg and what role she could give me if I was chosen. It was nice but nothing productive. Interview ends in 30 minutes.
- Meet the so called organizer of the whole process. Asks whether the interview was awesome. I say it was "ok". Goes on a tirade on how people like me have a low attitude and should be happy to meet awesome people. After all, the process took only a day.
- Keeps repeating "Hope you get it". "Hope you get it" with a smirk while I collect my luggage and thank her for all the arrangements.
- Leave broken hearted and look tearfully at Lexington tower while I rush to the airport.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. Deep copy a linked list with a random pointer.
2. Perimeter of the wall enclosed by an enemy. Eg:
121
121
If the enemy is labeled 2 in the above matrix, the wall size is 6.
3. Design a circle class and then on, utilities on top of it including randomly generating a point within a circle. How do you translate to polar coordinates and what changes I would make. What changes would be required for a Square/Rectangle/eclipse etc.