Status: New Grad, MS CS
Position: Software Engineer (new grad) at Bloomberg
Location: New York
Experience: Entry Level, past internship experiences (~1 year)
Date: Dec 2020 - Feb 2021

This is an effort to express my gratitude for all the guidance and help I received from the LeetCode community. I would really like to thank everyone who motivated me to pursue my dream by posting their interview experiences.

I applied to Bloomberg on their careers page in Dec, 2020 for the position of Software Engineer (New Grad). Received an email within 10 days to schedule a phone screen interview.

Phone Screen interview - (Dec, 2020)
The interviewer was very active and friendly. First, he introduced himself and spoke about his work at Bloomberg. Later, we spoke about my education and internship experiences. As my latest internship was in backend development, I was asked to name some things I liked and disliked about APIs followed with why Bloomberg, why this role. After the casual chat, we dived into coding. I was asked to solve:

Q) https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-substring-without-repeating-characters/ 

It was an interactive session of discussion and coding. We ran some test cases followed by discussion on the time complexity analysis. He had a few follow-ups after which there were 5 mins left for me to ask any questions.

After a week, I received an email from the recruiter that they want to move forward with my application and sent me available slots for the interview. All the slots were in Feb 2021.

They mentioned that there were going to be 2 rounds of technical video interviews (1 hour each).

I started my preparation with Bloomberg tagged questions on Leetcode. I solved around 150 questions - 30% Easy, 50% Medium, 20% Hard (some of these included questions which I solved previously)

Onsite Technical Round 1 - (Feb, 2021)
I was really nervous on the day of interview. There was only one interviewer, he was really friendly and curious to know more about my background. He introduced himself and later asked me questions like:

1. Tell me about yourself
2. Talk about an interesting project on your resume
3. What have you learnt / challenges from your internship
4. Why Bloomberg

We soon jumped into coding. I was asked questions that were similar to:

Q1) https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-level-order-traversal/

I was able to solve this perfectly and was also able to answer the follow-ups about time complexity analysis.

Q2) https://leetcode.com/problems/the-maze/

For this question, I had to write the code and explain my approach but was not asked to run any test cases. It was followed up by time complexity analysis and variations of the same question with added constraints. This round ended with questions from my end.

Onsite Technical Round 2 - (Same day as Round 1)
There was only one interviewer, who asked the same behavioral questions as in Round 1. The coding questions were variants of:

Q1) https://leetcode.com/problems/insert-delete-getrandom-o1/

Coded it perfectly and traced few examples with the code.

Q2) https://leetcode.com/problems/alien-dictionary/

The interviewer focussed on how I was explaining my approach and later asked me to code. It was more of a discussion and later asked me to trace my code for some examples. I read from several posts that if we do not get an invite for HR round, then it is a definite reject. I was very nervous but at the same time prepared for any decision but soon was relieved when he asked me to wait for HR to join.

HR Round - (Same day as Onsite)
I was asked mostly behavioral questions like:

1. Why Bloomberg
2. Why this role
3. How did you handle a tough situation during internships
4. What feedback did you get from your mentors / managers during internship (both positive and negative)

Informed me that the recruiter will reach out to me to schedule for a final senior manager round interview.

Senior Manager Round - (A week after the onsite)
This round was mostly resume oriented. I was asked many questions on my internship experience. He mentioned in the beginninng that there are going to be no coding / system design questions. I was asked about challenges I faced during internships and grilled on technical aspects of my work - had to explain the complete work flow of the internship project. He then asked me some behavioral questions after which I was given time to ask questions which I had.

Final Result
This was the most toughest part. I was told by the manager that they will get back in 4 to 5 days but did not hear back from them for around 2 weeks. I dropped an email to the recruiter as well but did not get a reply. However, one fine evening, I received a phone call from the HR and got a verbal offer. Later the next day, I received the offer letter. My advice to people who are in the same situation as me is to be patient.