Bloomberg Software Engineer - Trading Systems interview questions

Applied through a recruiting firm (who to their credit were quite efficient) First phone round went decently. Questions related to copy constructor and another algorithmic question. I thought my answer on the copy constructor wasn't upto the mark. Was elated when I got a call for a second phone interview Was much better prepared during this interview . Question 1 : Remove duplicate elements in a linked list Ans : Breezed through this as any developer worth his salt would Question 2 : Compare two binary trees and return if they are equal. Ans : Suggested a very acceptable solution where we traverse through the trees inorder and store them in vectors, and compare the vectors to check for equivalence. Was quizzed on that. Summary : Both programs were accurate solutions and the programs worked on Hackerrank without a hitch. However second one was probably not the 100% efficient result they were looking for. Result :REJECTED.

Brief description of my work experience followed by 2 coding questions using hackerrank to share screen. Syntax not a factor - interviewer just wanted to see the algorithm. I coded as fast as I could, stumbled slightly, corrected myself quickly. I even presented a recursive and completely correct solution to one of the problems. It was obvious the interviewer wasn't prepared for an out-of-the-box answer, and as such had difficulty articulating his canned followup question. Despite the pressure of coding while holding a phone in one hand and a laptop in the other, I felt confident with my performance and enjoyed the interview (I don't say this about all interviews). 3-days later I received an email that they were not moving forward with the application. Felt like punching a wall after that.