I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Bloomberg
Interview
I really liked Bloomberg as a brand and find their website really easy to use. However, the interviewing process was a let-down.
First Round - Technical Phone Interview with an Engineer on Hackerrank (1 hour)
Second Round - CV based questions and coding test on Hackerrank (1 hour)
Third Round - Architecture drawing (1 hour)
Fourth Round - Past experiences with Director/Manager (1hour)
First Round - The interviewer was very easy going and this round solely focused on code test on HackerRank and a math-based question. The interviewer did not do any Q&A
Second Round - This round focused on Q&A and a Hackerrank code test closer to their day-to-day work. Throughout the interview, the interviewers appear quite unorganised and talked over each other very often. The lead interviewer appeared annoyed for the second half due to my slow progress. I did fairly poorly on the tech test by spending majority of the time troubleshooting my code on HackerRank. e.g., spelling mistakes, incorrect method name. I still find the interviewers reluctant to help a bit odd on areas usually covered by an IDE. There were also a lack of briefing and I am totally unaware we only had an hour for both Q&A and technical tests.
Third Round - In this round I was given a blank canvas and asked to design a system. I find the two interviewers extremely helpful and easy going. There were considerably more interactions to bounce ideas around.
Fourth Round - Initially I was expecting an HR round with managers, it turned out to be a round with math based questions and indepth projects dicussion. I struggled on this one as I failed to articulate my speech and messed up explaining my previous projects. The lead interviewer appeared annoyed and shut himself away for the remainder of the interview.
Overall I find Bloomberg's interview unpleasant. I feel ill-informed throughout the process on time and expectations. My Bloomberg recruiter suggested to me it was intentional to not give out any information around agenda to see how a candidate would react under pressure.
The feedbacks I received were not very useful as there were just grades and one liner, Coding - junior (Wasn’t able to see the real problem), Communication - medium (The explanation for his past project wasn't clear).
Appreciate your time for reading this, Good Luck to you all!
I applied online. I interviewed at Bloomberg in Jan 2021
Interview
3 rounds.
1. Phone interview with screen share to solve problem that lasted 1 hour
2. Problem solving round with some SQL questions that lasted 1 hr
3. Design round with specific pattern that lasted 1 hour
4. Behavioral round with the Manager for 45 minutes
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. Challenges you faced recently
2. Solve a String based problem
Interview process was standard like most other top tech companies - couple rounds of algorithmic screens, then onsite with algorithms and design questions. Felt weird to be asked OOP type questions as a senior.