Thank you LeetCode for preparing me for the coding portion of the interviews! I applied to Bloomberg for the Software Engineer New Grad position in late May, and recieved an offer late June.

Phone Screen

The interviewer was nice and friendly, and jumped into the technical part of the interview after a brief resume review.

• The first question was non-coding and just asked to print unique numbers from a string of numbers. I said use a set, then we got into the specifics of hashing and how hash tables work.
• The next question involved coding, where I had to sort the children of each node in a tree, where each node contains a list of the children. The subtrees needed to get carried over as well. I first tried with level order traversal, but then later realized (with the help of hints) that I can call node.children.sort() recursively. He was happy so we moved to the next question.
• This was the 2-city-scheduling problem from LeetCode, solved it and he was happy.
• Last few minutes were for my questions, just asked about projects etc. Make sure to prepare for this part too – ask good questions!

Result: Onsite scheduled

Virtual Onsite

I had 4 interviews here, even though the email said I would ahve 2 technical interviews. I guess this is in agreement with what others have said – if you stop after the first 2 rounds it's probably a reject. But try not to think about this.. Just do your best in the first 2 rounds.

Round 1 (Technical)

Met with two interviewers via video chat. Talked about a project/internship from my resume, then jumped into coding on hackerrank codingpad.

• First question was 1D candy-crush, as described in an earlier bloomberg post. Solved it no problem.
• Second question tripped me up a bit. The question was an array based question with positive integers. The solution involved sorting and replacing all the elements itereatively with the smallest numbers, but I had a hard time getting there. The interviewer gave me some hints and I eventually got there. But I thought I would get rejected because of this question.
• Last few minutes were about my questions.

Round 2 (Technical)

Again, met with two interviewers via video chat. Talked about a project/internship from my resume, then jumped into coding on hackerrank codingpad.

• First question was design underground system, solved it and they were happy.
• Second question was a variation of the Min Stack problem, solved it and they were happy.
• Last few minutes were for my questions.

At this point they asked me to stay online and said that either someone from HR or another engineer will come online. I was surprised because I was expecting a rejection anyway!

Round 3 (Managerial Round)

Met with a senior manager and spoke for a full hour, no coding involved. Essentially it was a design interview, but involved something from my resume. Got grilled on technical knowledge and was able to hold my own. The round went well. Last few minutes were for my questions.

At this point they told me to stay online for an HR person

Round 4 (HR)

This round was shorter than the rest, and went by pretty fast. I was really tired by this time, had gone through 4 bottles of water and hadn't eaten anything, so I had to make some effort to answer even simple questions. But it went well. Last few minutes were for my questions.

Decision: got contacted within a week and got the offer!

All the interviewers were very friendly and I had a great experience.
Also, if you can afford it, I high recommend getting premium. I got it solely for this interview, and it helped me a lot. The frequency of the questions is really accurate and you'll definitely benefit from it. Also, remember that LeetCode only prepares you for the coding part. You must work on your communication skills as well, and practice talking confidently about stuff you've worked on. Thanks again LeetCode :)