2025–2026 Bloomberg New Grad Interviews: 98 Experiences (Part 5 :)

Continued from Part 4: the remaining shorter candidate reports.

Coverage: Short 17–48 of 48 shorter admitted reports.

48 shorter candidate reports — continued

Ordered newest to oldest within the shorter-report section.

Short 17: Resume validation followed by a Recover BST-style task

Report date: November 17, 2025 · Role: 2026 New Grad SWE · Stage: First technical · Result: Passed

The first 15 minutes tested whether the candidate could substantiate resume claims. Coding then used an obfuscated problem most consistent with Recover Binary Search Tree, followed by complexity and optimization discussion. The exact wording did not survive, so no practice link is asserted.

Short 18: Valid Parentheses and Subsets with a veteran interviewer

Report date: November 13, 2025 · Role: 2026 New Grad SWE · Stage: VO1 · Status: Pending

A Bloomberg engineer with 26 years at the company spent about 25 minutes on background, projects, system choices, and bottlenecks. Coding used Valid Parentheses and Subsets, with emphasis on explaining the approach before writing code.

Short 19: Multilevel-list flattening and an in-place shuffle

Report date: November 11, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Stage: First campus technical · Status: Outcome not disclosed

The candidate solved a Flatten a Multilevel Doubly Linked List variant using recursive pointer tracking, then designed an in-place Fisher–Yates-style card shuffle. Feedback arrived three days later, but the source did not state the decision.

Short 20: Connect Four scoring on a falling-piece grid

Report date: November 7, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Stage: Virtual interview · Status: Outcome not disclosed

After the interviewer explained the game, the candidate received a Connect Four grid problem. Letter-like pieces fell into columns, and scoring depended on four equal symbols appearing horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

Short 21: First and K-th unique character

Report date: November 6, 2025 · Role: New Grad SDE · Stage: VO1 · Status: Outcome not disclosed

After a long resume-project discussion, the candidate implemented first-unique-character logic and then generalized it to the K-th unique character. Follow-ups added empty input, no unique character, repeated characters, and symbols; the remaining time was limited because the interviewer arrived late.

Short 22: Blackjack and card-system object design

Report date: November 5, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Stage: First technical · Status: Outcome not disclosed

Instead of LeetCode, the interview asked for a Blackjack/card system: model a 52-card deck, shuffling, players, and drawing from the deck. Follow-ups explored class ownership and safe behavior when the deck was exhausted.

Short 23: Two tagged mediums in forty minutes

Report date: November 1, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Result: No offer

The first round opened with projects and experience, followed by two Bloomberg-tagged medium problems in about 40 minutes and 5–10 minutes for questions. The candidate described the interviewer as helpful but did not disclose the exact tasks.

Short 24: Positive VO1 with an unrecoverable problem identity

Report date: October 30, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Stage: VO1 · Result: Passed

A friendly interviewer asked introductions, one behavioral question, and how the candidate learns a new technology. The coding task was described only by an ambiguous phonetic LeetCode label, so its inputs and objective cannot be reconstructed honestly.

Short 25: Five-round offer with tagged variations

Report date: October 30, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Result: Offer

The candidate completed five interviews: three roughly hour-long LeetCode/OOD-style rounds that began with a resume project and used two coding questions, a 30-minute behavioral HR round, and a 40-minute engineering-manager resume discussion.

Short 26: Cascading string elimination

Report date: October 29, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Stage: Onsite · Result: Passed

Given a string such as aaabbcaaacc, the candidate repeatedly removed qualifying runs in a match-three style process. A follow-up changed simultaneous removal into sequential cascading; the source preserves the mechanics but not a complete threshold rule, so the closest practice family is Remove Adjacent Duplicates in String II.

Short 27: Two days of on-campus coding

Report date: October 6, 2025 · Role: 2026 New Grad SDE · Stage: Campus onsite · Result: Passed

Day one used Valid Triangle Number and a linked-list flattening task. Day two used Tree Level with the Most Nodes and Trapping Rain Water with an O(1)-space follow-up.

Short 28: Virtual, campus, and manager stages with no offer

Report date: October 1, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Location: New York City · Result: No offer

The candidate reported a 60-minute virtual technical, on-campus technical rounds, and an engineering-manager round. Questions were close to tagged variants, and the manager stage included a detailed project discussion; exact coding prompts were not preserved.

Short 29: BST conversion, Course Schedule, and Islands

Report date: August 26, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Stage: Onsite · Result: Rejected

The first round combined “Why Bloomberg?”, a project, and BST to Sorted Circular Doubly Linked List. The second used Course Schedule and Number of Islands.

Short 30: Number of Islands in a two-medium screen

Report date: June 25, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Location: New York City · Result: No offer

The one-hour technical contained two medium LeetCode problems plus “Why Bloomberg?”, prior work, and several follow-ups. The only named task was Number of Islands.

Short 31: N-ary path, custom alphabet, and top news

Report date: March 25, 2025 · Role: New Grad SDE · Status: Outcome not disclosed

Three rounds covered Minimum-Cost Root-to-Leaf Path in an N-ary Tree, sorting words by a custom alphabet, and designing a Top-N news system. APIs and scale assumptions were not preserved.

Short 32: Minimum Remove to Make Valid Parentheses

Report date: March 19, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Stage: Technical interview · Result: Rejected

After about 15 minutes of introductions, the candidate solved Minimum Remove to Make Valid Parentheses. The rest of the 50–60 minute interview became a company-culture discussion.

Short 33: Equal frequencies and multilevel-list flattening

Report date: March 12, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Stage: Phone screen · Status: Outcome not disclosed

The screen asked whether deleting one character could equalize all remaining frequencies, then used Flatten a Multilevel Doubly Linked List. The interviewer was unfamiliar with Python Counter and deque, so the candidate explained or replaced those tools.

Short 34: No-show followed by a linked-list screen

Report date: February 27, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Location: New York City · Result: No offer

The first interviewer did not appear, so recruiting rescheduled the screen. The completed interview covered experience, interest in Bloomberg, and one medium linked-list problem whose exact identity was not disclosed.

Short 35: Two completed stages followed by rejection

Report date: February 26, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Result: Rejected

Round one used two tagged problems. Round two used one LeetCode-like task plus a follow-up, both of which the candidate reported solving. A rejection arrived one week later instead of the expected continuation to additional interviews and a manager round.

Short 36: Four-hour reservation, only one VO

Report date: February 25, 2025 · Role: New Grad SDE · Stage: Virtual onsite · Status: No update

The candidate was asked to reserve four hours because more interviews might be added based on performance and availability. Only one VO occurred, and the thread records no same-day continuation or later result.

Short 37: URL-history data structure pushed toward constant time

Report date: February 25, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Stage: First VO · Status: No update

The candidate first modeled URL history with a linked list, then was challenged on lookup cost and moved toward hash-map-backed O(1) operations. The exact API and ordering rules were not preserved; the closest live exercise is Design Browser History.

Short 38: Four tagged problems, clean solutions, template rejection

Report date: February 21, 2025 · Role: 2025 New Grad SWE · Result: Rejected

The candidate completed a phone screen and three VO rounds, reporting four tagged questions plus follow-ups solved immediately. Bloomberg sent a template rejection two days later and provided no technical feedback; the four problem identities were not shared.

Short 39: Remove duplicates and Meeting Rooms

Report date: February 6, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Stage: Phone screen · Status: Outcome not disclosed

The first task removed duplicates from an unsorted array and returned a new result, with discussion of alternative approaches. The second was Meeting Rooms, recovered after one hint. The candidate dry-ran both and explained complexity.

Short 40: The 10/40/10 screen with no disclosed coding prompt

Report date: February 1, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Location: New York City · Result: No offer

The interview used about ten minutes for self-introduction and “Why Bloomberg?”, forty minutes for HackerRank coding with interviewer-entered tests and complexity follow-ups, and ten minutes for candidate questions. The report did not preserve the task.

Short 41: One VO despite a multi-hour reservation

Report date: January 24, 2025 · Role: 2025 New Grad SWE · Stage: VO · Status: No response

The candidate solved two executed phone-screen questions, waited six weeks, and reserved three to four hours for VO. Only one 40-minute coding round occurred: the first task was solved optimally and the second reached an accepted approach and complexity explanation before time was called.

Short 42: London final-decision delay that ended in an offer

Report date: January 23, 2025 · Role: Graduate SWE · Location: London · Result: Offer

All rounds except the manager interview finished before the holidays; the manager conversation happened after New Year. After three weeks of waiting and one follow-up, the candidate received an offer and attributed the delay to internal backlog rather than interview performance.

Short 43: Two medium problems completed, then generic rejection

Report date: January 1, 2025 · Role: New Grad SWE · Result: Rejected

The one-hour interview contained two medium LeetCode questions plus standard resume and behavioral discussion. The candidate completed everything and felt confident, but received a generic rejection one week later with no explanation.

Short 44: Flight insertion and path enumeration in C++ recruiting

Report date: December 17, 2024 · Role: Finance Backend C++ New Grad · Result: Rejected

After one unnamed medium problem, the candidate designed a flight structure with insertFlight and returnAllPossiblePaths. They answered the complexity question incorrectly and were rejected two weeks later. Cycle handling, path order, and representation were not preserved.

Short 45: Rotated-array variant with careful edge cases

Report date: December 3, 2024 · Role: New Grad SWE · Stage: VO · Result: Advanced

After a resume project, the candidate spent roughly 40 minutes on a Search in Rotated Sorted Array variant, testing multiple examples and edge cases. An edit confirmed advancement to the next VO.

Short 46: Adjacent duplicate removal and constant-time random set

Report date: December 1, 2024 · Role: 2025 New Grad SWE · Stage: First technical · Status: No next round reported

Coding used a simpler Remove Adjacent Duplicates in String II variation and Insert Delete GetRandom, with verbal follow-ups on the second task.

Short 47: Islands and integer-based string compression

Report date: November 16, 2024 · Role: SWE New Grad · Stage: Phone screen · Status: Outcome not disclosed

After introductions and a challenging-project behavioral, the candidate solved Number of Islands and a String Compression variation in which input and output were represented as integers.

Short 48: Conference onsite rejection after one missed edge case

Report date: October 31, 2024 · Role: 2025 New Grad SWE · Stage: GHC onsite · Result: Rejected

Extensive resume and behavioral questioning preceded one unidentified easy problem and a cascading-removal task over strings such as ABBAC. The candidate missed one edge case in the second problem and received a rejection one week later.