I interviewed at Bloomberg (New York, NY) in Dec 2009
Interview
Hiring process is pretty streamlined. Usually u go through an online programming oriented test, then a phone interview and then in-house interviews. All of the interviews are very technical in nature strictly programming/db specific and only if u make through technical stuff u get to go through a mild HR/behavioral sort of interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Dont remember specific questions but prepare urself for hardcore programming, problem solving, databases and best practices stuff.
I applied through college or university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Bloomberg (Londres, Inglaterra)
Interview
I had a first interview over the phone for simple java questions after which I got invited for an inhouse interview.
They showed me some c code to see my understanding of it. They asked me about some pointer etc types and if I could identify them and some string manipulation. Also some more algorithmic questions.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
A rabbit wants to climb some stairs and it can do steps of 1 or 2. How many possible paths are there to follow ( e.g 1-1-1... or 2-2-2 ... or 2-1-2-1... etc)
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Bloomberg (Londres, Inglaterra) in Dec 2012
Interview
I applied for a non-computer science entry level position. They got back to me really fast (a couple of days). The phone interview was fast, they asked about my university work and any programming experience. They asked afterwards about stack/ heap, garbage collection in c++ vs java, and other simple things. I was invited to a face to face interview, where I was asked why I wanted to work for Bloomberg, and what makes me a sensible choice.
They asked about finding the 1st missing element in a sorted N-1 set of numbers (they were looking at sublinear complexity algorithms, not the sum from 1 to N minus the sum of all elements in the set, which is linear complexity).
They asked about finding the maximum loss of a trading day given the numbers, and how I would implement it.
They replied roughly 24 hours after the face to face interview. It was a fairly nice experience actually (yes they do have free snacks and coffee at the office and very beautiful aquariums).
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
1st missing number in a sorted set of N-1 integers (numbers between 1 and N) ?