I had a very interesting interview experience with Bloomberg in San Fran. I chatted on the phone with a lady for my first initial interview for about half an hour and it seemed really simple. Eventually I got an email that they were willing to fly me out to San Fran to do more interviewing. During this whole process I was constantly in contact with a variety of different people in the Bloomberg office in NY and San Fran between travel plans and interviewing so they seem to have a large and efficient process for handling applicants. I wanted to do well in this interview and tried to prep the best I could for it. For this role I think they are looking for more finance people that are sales oriented than marketing people who are finance oriented if that makes sense. I had compiled lists of questions from Glassdoor that they might ask me and had answers for all of them and still wasn't prepared for what awaited me in there. I shadowed a few of the guys who are currently working in sales and analytics for FX/Commodities and they seemed really cool and laid back but the job is really stressful- tons of flashing colored lights on monitors and juggling tasks and you have to REALLY know what you are doing. If you know the terminal, you will get this job. If you haven't used it before the interview, things won't work out for you. I interviewed with two people- the lady in charge of the sales and analytics and a man in sales. They asked me a lot about my sales experience and they had a lot of tough questions about the financial markets today. You must know a lot of details about current events in the market and show what you know. I ended up digging myself into a hole during this interview process because I didn't know enough. Eventually they left the room "to discuss if they would need me further" and decided I was done for the day and I basically knew I didn't get the job on the spot. I wasn't a good fit anyways. They followed up with an impersonal email that said "thanks, but no thanks". I would say I was happy with the overall professional air and quality of this interview had my travel plans not been completely messed up by Bloomberg. They paid for my flights but neglected to tell me that I would have to pay for a $300/night hotel room in San Fran while I was there, plus I spent about $150 in cab rides for only being there about 24 hours. I was under the impression that Bloomberg was going to pay for my hotel, I called the my travel coordinator in the New York office, left her a voicemail about the charges to my credit card and she never called me back. Figures.

It was a natural conversation. Not tense. Almost didn’t even feel like I was having an interview. Tested both Japanese and English skills. They also asked me about their products