Earlier this year, I received an email from my Amazon recruiter stating that I have successfully passed their virtual on-site interviews. I still had to do team matching, but truth be told, I am very likely to land an offer from Amazon at this point.

I almost signed off on it instantaneously. I was very eager to upgrade my career. I wanted to start pooping out those golden paycheques yesterday.

But I didn’t pull the trigger too quickly. In fact, I couldn’t.

COVID complicated things and delayed my team-matching process with Amazon.

During the meantime, I receive the following message on LinkedIn:

And thus another interview series was born.

Pro-tip: polish your LinkedIn profile, so it pops up to recruiters.

HR process

The intial HR process was pretty straightforward.

I responded to the message, the HR wanted a resume and a time for a phone chat.

We scheduled a phone chat pretty quickly.

Pro-tip: be prepared to talk about compensation expectations in the beginning. Check out levels.fyi to find out the compensation ranges by the company & role.

Bloomberg Interview Process Breakdown

The major steps would be as follows:

1. Recruiter phone screen (right now)
2. Team-matching. The recruiter finds and sends a couple specific job postings. And for each role that interests you, you will have the following interviews below.
3. Technical phone interview
4. On-site interview

Yes, you read that correctly. You need to do a separate phone & on-site for each role you are interested in. Very different approach from Amazon and Google.

Phone Interview Breakdown

• a techincal phone interview via HackerRank
• 1 hour
• programming language specific to the job (Javascript in my case)

On-Site Interview Breakdown

• usually 4 rounds, give or take
• 1 hour each
• combination of algorithm, system design, and behavioral questions

My Next Steps

The recruiter initially sent me a single position, but then later followed up with another team that was interested in my profile. So, I had two teams that I could interview with.

I read both postings, and they both sounded super interesting. They were well aligned with my interests.

I accepted both interviews and thus would have 2 phone and 2 on-sites coming up.

Less Nervousness, More Confidence

I was very excited about interviewing with Bloomberg.

It was a big deal, but… It felt very different compared to interviewing with Amazon.

I mean, at this point, I had a decent offer with Amazon coming up around the corner. Amazon interviews were the ultimate test of my career. Even if I didn’t get an offer from Bloomberg, I would still have a dream job offer on my table.

So, I wasn’t nervous. I didn’t have the high expecations. Just confidence.

Of course, I still wanted to try my best in case the logistics with Amazon fell through. Plus, I’m very interested in Bloomberg too.

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In my next post, I will write about the phone interview.