I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Bloomberg (New York, NY) in Oct 2014
Interview
1st Phone interview -
- Given a array of numbers and sum k, find a pair in the array that sum to k
- Give an algorithm to print the paragraph of text based on the screen size
2nd Phone interview -
- Find the m-th last element in a linked list
- Given a large collection of characters(collection will have duplicates as well) and a dictionary, find an efficient algorithm to return the 10 longest words you can form using the characters in the collection. If a character is used in a word, it cannot be used in the next word.
On site Interview -
1st round -
Given meetings schedule of the participants. Find a slot when everyone is free
2nd round -
- Each node has up, down, next pointers. Up points to a number less than self, down points to number greater than self. All the nodes are sorted. Flatten the linked list such that it has only next pointer and all the nodes remain sorted.
- There is an inflow of ticker symbols and prices. Maintain min, max, last 5 prices seen
- Decrypt a string of text. You are given a dictionary and a method that returns a score for a character which is less than 1. If we sum of the scores of all the 26 characters we get 1.
3rd round - senior manager
There are 100 people sitting in a circle. Every second person is opted out. Who wins.
4th round -
Casual discussion with senior manager
5th round -
HR talked about experience through out the day and salary and benefits
I applied online. The process took 4 days. I interviewed at Bloomberg in Nov 2014
Interview
Using HackerRank.com you are being asked to write code. In the same time you are talking on the phone with interviewer. You'll see questions in left side and as you are selecting texts, writing codes, etc. your interviewer see your actions live time. Interviewer wasn't so much concerned about code to be ready to run, but more interested to see your algorithm solution.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Merge to sorted arrays into second array, both arrays has N elements, but second array size is N * 2. So you merge both arrays in second array in a sorted way.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Bloomberg (New York, NY) in Oct 2014
Interview
Step 1. Phone interview. Std Core Java questions. Generics, erasure, recursion, GC. If you have experience as a Java programmer, there is little much you can do to mess it up unless you curse the interviewer.
Step 2. Face to Face interview. Take me thru the steps what happens when you type a URL into your browser. Load balancing. I think these went OK. Then the next was to write an algorithm to solve some continuous function. I definitely bombed that.
Anyway, I don't want to sound like a disgruntled interviewee who did not get the job. And I would have really liked to work there even though I don't really care about the location or the free chips.
But it looks like they don't really value your experience. When you code in a programming language/OS for a long time, it pretty much becomes second nature. And for a contracting position not really sure how solving a problem involving continuous functions really helps anyone. The next interviewer asked me why I wanted to work at Bloomberg Law. You can easily BS for this question (search on youtube and you will find step by step instructions). But is this really relevant for a 6 months+ contracting position? Calm down dude, tell me a problem you have and let me help you solve it. I think its best for people fresh out of school or probably 1-3 years experience. If you have tons of experience like >10 years, don't bother. The market is great and you will find a job anywhere.
My 2 cents for what its worth.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Something involving continuous functions and how to determine what points they cross the origin. I tuned out when the interviewer drew the x and y-axis. Really is this the kind of problem you are solving everyday? Why don't you ask me to write some algorithms that make sense.