I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Bloomberg (Princeton, NJ)
Interview
One of the R&D manager at Bloomberg contacted me through LinkedIn to apply for the role.
The first round was a technical phone interview. The interviewer asked me about one of my project and how I designed it. He changed requirements, various scenarios and asked how I would adapt the design. Then a simple question on adding two very large numbers(using linked list).
The next round was at their Princeton office a month later. Had two technical interviews. The first interviewer asked questions on Data Structures. Like complexities of various operations(insert, search, delete) on data structures like array, linked list, heap, stack, trees. Then questions on networking and operating systems. I had taken OS class more than an year back and didn't take any Computer network classes during my grad studies(the interviewer was surprised on this). Too bad not to revise them and messed up on these questions. Then a simple problem of opening and close bracket validation which I solved but didn't engineer well. The next round was about concepts of OOP, language design and garbage collection. I think my first round had already made a bad dent and the second round was over earlier than the interview of other candidates with me.
After lunch, it was a small discussion of 5-10 min with the HR person with questions like what interests you in Bloomberg etc.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How hashtables work? Validate the opening and closing of brackets in a string.
What interest you to work at Bloomberg?
I applied online. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Bloomberg (New York, NY) in Oct 2015
Interview
The entire process took about 1 1/2 week because I had an offer deadline coming up. First, I had one 30-45 minute phone interview with an engineer. Then I got invited on site for 4 ~45 minute rounds.
Round 1: Technical and relatively straightforward
Round 2: Technical and a bit more challenging
Round 3: HR Interview. If you make it this far, you passed the first two rounds.
Round 4: Interview with a manager. Very relaxed, got a tour of the Bloomberg terminal and got any remaining questions about the company answered
I heard back next day.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Definitely use Cracking the Coding Interview for this one, some of the questions were straight out of the book.
Q1: Perform and print level order traversal of a binary tree
Q2: Add 2 numbers whose digits are stored in a linked list, i.e. add(1->2->3->4, 4->5->6->7) is equivalent to adding 1234 + 4567.
Q3: Print level at which node is in a binary tree
Q4: Iterative Fibonacci
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Bloomberg (New York, NY) in Apr 2015
Interview
1 phone interview and 1 in-house interview.
Every one is very nice during the process of interviews. And HR always gave you feedback quickly.
In house interview should be 4 rounds if you are qualified. Most unqualified candidates only take 2 rounds.
I only took 2 rounds.
The only thing made me unhappy was that I didn't get my lunchbox even after several requests.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. In a big file of two very very long strings, delete the characters which they both have.
2. disjoint set questions