I applied online. I interviewed at Bloomberg (London, England)
Interview
I applied online through careers section of Bloomberg. The application was for entry level software engineer at Bloomberg London site. I needed to upload my resume and cover letter. My language of choice for the interview was C/C++. I had one phone interview (1:1) and two video interview (2:1). Following this, I was called for onsite interview at London office and had three round of interview there (2-tech, 1-HR). Following onsite interview I had a final interview with tech head at London site.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1.Pointer basics.
2.Bracket matching:
/*
"(aa)bb" -> true
"[ aa [ bbb ]" -> false
"aa } bbb { c" -> false
"aa [ bb () ]" -> true
"[aa { ] cc } ]" -> false
*/
3. Design and implement a web browser which supports the functionality that at any given instance you can efficiently tell the top 5 visited websites on basis of number of visits. This question was a variant of LRU cache and it can be optimally implemented using a map and doubly linked list.
4. Run length encoding of string. See below for example:
aaaaabbbccd → a5b3c2d1
xyz → x1y1z1
5. Merge overlapping intervals. See below for example:
[1,3] [2,5] [8,9] → [1,5] [8,9]
[1,3] [2,6] [4,99] → [1,99]
6. Given a binary tree, tell whether this is a valid BST.
7. Implement a generic hashmap in C++. Make sure to use templates, good hash functions and be ready to discuss design to handle collisions.
There will be behavioral questions. Make sure to prepare for the question : Why Bloomberg?
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.
Fairly simple. Phone call then onsite. For onsite it was 10 min office tour follow by 1 hr interview then 1 hours system design and 30 mins manager interview. Interviewers were nice and the recruiter was accommodating.
5 rounds first 3 being leetcode coding ones and the last 2 being behavioral. The first three are the hardest asking mainly taggeed questions and the rest are not that bad