Bloomberg Interview Experience
Applied mid-August and received an email to schedule a phone screen within 1 week.
The interview slots were only 2 days away.
Technical Phone Screen
Had solved around 350-ish problems on Leetcode till then.
Tried to solve as many Bloomberg-tagged questions on LC as possible within 2 days.
This was going to be my very first interview.
The interviewer did not show up and I was really upset. Within 1 hr of my scheduled time, the recruiter called me and apologized. He asked if I was free in the evening for the interview. I agreed.
This time the interviewer showed up on time and chatted a little while.
The first question was 1D Candy Crush.
I solved it using a stack approach.
The code ran perfectly.
The second question was an open ended design question.
It was somewhat of a restaurant delivery application (but similar to LFU, LC #460).
He wanted to know what data structures I would use. It was more of a discussion and not much coding.
Within 6 days I received the invite for virtual onsite.
Virtual Onsite
Round 1
The interviewer was really nice and friendly. He asked me a little about my resume and projects.
Then we moved on to coding.
First question:
Rotate List, LC #61
I first explained to him my approach through an example and we discussed certain edge cases.
Then I could code the solution and it ran smoothly.
Second question:
Not directly from Leetcode but similar to grid problems.
From the top-left corner I had to reach bottom-right in minimum steps and could go only right and down directions.
I discussed both DFS+memoization and BFS traversal for this problem.
The interviewer was very happy and asked me to code any one I am comfortable with. I coded the BFS algorithm.
Round 2
This time there were 2 interviewers. Both of them were less talkative but very polite.
First question:
Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters, LC #3
Again first I used an example to explain the algorithm and then coded it.
Second question:
Design Underground Subway System, LC #1396
I had read about this question in all previous posts and was completely prepared with all the data structures necessary.
After this round, they asked me to wait for the next 2 HR and Managerial rounds.
The HR round had basic questions regarding my immigration requirements, my graduation date, etc.
The Hiring Manager round was also a general chat about my projects and interest areas. No coding or design questions were asked.
Offer
After a very long wait I woke up in the morning to find a scheduled phone call with the recruiter.
During the call she told me about my offer and the email followed later that evening.