I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Bloomberg (New York, NY) in Mar 2017
Interview
Applied online sometime in Nov 2016. Received a mail from them in March 2017 that they want to schedule a phone interview. The phone interview was exactly as expected with the same questions:
The only unexpected part was that the interviewer was NOT friendly, neither was he encouraging. The interviewer was one of those who seemed disinterested and instead of understanding my logic, kept asking "Why does this test case fails". I made a silly mistake but I could have nailed it had the interviewer been at least little encouraging. Within 2 minutes of the end of the interview, I could run all the test cases - the error was so minor! I accept minor mistakes do cost jobs and take full responsibility, however,the interviewer was pretty disinterested which added to my problems. I provided a O(n) solution whereas the interview told me he does not think there is a solution better than O(n^2) which was , again, discouraging. Because, there definitely was a O(n) solution.
Overall - my experience was bad.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. Tell me about yourself
2. Why Bloomberg
3. Tell me about your internship experience
4. Coding question: given a array and a number k, find a contiguous longest subarray having sum <=k.
Phone screen went very well, i passed to the onsites and they gave me the problem statement and i proposed a sub-optimal solution. They told to me come up with more optimal solution and didn't give me much time to think about it. They got impatient and gave me a hint. I figured it out and solved the problem, but apparently they thought I needed hints, which I didn't ask for.
15 minutes talking about resume, 45 minutes for 2 medium leetcode style coding questions (using code share), the interviewer was very friendly and communication is even more important than passing all test cases.
Overall, it was a positive and professional interview experience, though the interviewer was on the stricter side. Unfortunately, I was dealing with an illness and wasn't able to prepare as thoroughly as I wanted to, which left me feeling a bit off throughout the conversation. Despite not feeling my best and facing a tough interviewer, the process was well-structured.