Bloomberg — all about new-grad Software Engineer Interviews
Bloomberg L.P. is a financial, software, data, and media company. The Company provides financial software tools such as an analytics and equity trading platform, data services, and news to financial companies and organisations. Bloomberg serves customers worldwide.
It is known for its work culture, good work life balance and great pay.
This article is an attempt to share the entire process behind receiving a Software Engineer New Grad offer from Bloomberg L.P., London. I hope this brings some clarity about the process to you. So let’s START!
Step 1: How to apply?
Pretty straightforward. I applied to their careers website with a referral. Now the important part here is to know when to apply. From my experience, the openings for New grad SWE role starts around August — September every year (this is for London office, not sure about other locations). So worth keep a check during this time. Also, as you can see Resume plays a key role in shortlisting.
Once the application gets shortlisted, a recruiter reaches out to schedule the interviews.
Step 2: Interview Process
Bloomberg’s Interview process can be broadly divided into 2 parts -
- Phone Screen
- On-sites (3 to 4 rounds)
In normal circumstances you give one Phone Screening round from your home, and then asked to fly to their Office for Onsite rounds. The entire expenses of this is covered by Bloomberg London (YES!). But this year due to pandemic, all interviews happened virtually.
Phone Screen
The interviewer called over phone and we were using a codepair for coding. This round is relatively easier with a medium Leetcode type question.
My Tip for this round: Go through Bloomberg experiences on Leetcode Discuss, and practice Bloomberg tagged questions on leetcode.
Note — Every Interviewer in Bloomberg will ask you about your motivation to join Bloomberg (a.k.a Why Bloomberg). So be prepared.
On-sites
- Coding Interview
This round is taken by two engineers who ask 1–2 medium-hard Leetcode type questions. I was asked one medium question followed by a harder follow-up question. One should be able to come up with a step-by-step solution to both of them.
Taking enough examples and discussing throughout the interview is helpful. Make sure you are speaking out loud while coming up to the solution.
2. System Design/Architecture Interview
This round is with an Engineering Manager. My interviewer was very kind and friendly. He asked me to design one of existing system/product of Bloomberg. The question here is intentionally left very open-ended so I asked many questions to understand the requirements/scope of the system.
From my observation, this round is highly dependent on the discussion with the interviewer since we don’t need to code anything in this round. You’ll mostly only be drawing few diagrams and listing out APIs, data tables, etc. So approaching the system in small portions, handling them one by one and sharing the thought process throughout is quite helpful.
3. HR Interview
I did not do any specific preparation for this round. The round was completely non-technical with an HR and Engineering Manager. The questions in this round revolved around my past internship experience (challenges faced and takeaways), handling team conflicts, favourite project I worked on, major failures in the past, what are you looking for in a job, existing offers, etc. And of course Why Bloomberg?
In my experience, being authentic in your answers should be enough for this round.
Conclusion
I am glad that you read this far!
This is all I had to share about applying and interviewing at Bloomberg. I hope this helps. If you have any feedbacks, please share that.
Feel free to connect if you have any doubts or even otherwise!
Shruti Aggarwal
