Here’s how I got my first software engineering internship (and my first job) at Bloomberg.

Table of Contents

The motivation

I just wanted to preface this post by saying that the main reason why I wanted to write this was not to brag about how I got an internship, but rather to (1) reflect on how I got an internship so I can continuously improve and (2) so that I can help other people get CS internships. I also wanted to preface this post by saying that each person’s experience getting into software engineering will be different so take my advice and experience with a grain of salt.

The preparation

I would say that a significant portion of my preparation to enter the workforce was done before I even started thinking about my career, and that a lot of it had to do with the circumstances I was born into. For example, I was very fortunate to grow up in a suburb of San Jose, CA with great public schools and extracurricular activities. I was probably in 6th grade when I wrote my first program on code.org to make a red Angry Bird move to a green pig on the screen. On the other hand, many people don’t learn how to code until high school or even college. That’s not to say, of course, that growing up privileged is a guarantee for success – but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

In terms of my previous experience going into the internship application process, I had taken 4 community college CS courses (including Data Structures, which I think is the most important thing to know before you begin applying for any CS internship). I had audited MIT’s 6.00.1x course on edX (which I highly recommend as a great intro to Python, by the way). I had a significant personal project, making a Discord bot Enoch that gave me practical Python, Git, and GitHub experience working on a team to make a “product” used by hundreds of people. I was currently attending a well-known CS university (UC Berkeley) and was part of a selective CS club on campus, Codebase, which allowed me to get even more practical experience through their client projects. Thinking about it in hindsight now, I had quite a lot of experience for a freshman, which I think benefitted me by the time I arrived at the application phase. Of course, you never quite know how much experience you need and feeling like you are completely unqualified is, I like to think, a very normal feeling.

During the first few weeks of freshman year in college, I also attended a bunch of industry recruiting events through AWE, SWE, and the UC Berkeley Career Center. I also had mentorship through my brother (also a CS major) and my Codebase professional development mentor.

The applications

My process of getting a Bloomberg internship started with my application to Bloomberg & NCWIT’s Grace Hopper 2021 grant. Being a grant recipient allowed me to not only attend the Grace Hopper virtual conference, but also gave me access to Bloomberg recruiting events for grant recipients only. It was at one of these events that a Bloomberg recruiter provided a link to apply for their summer 2022 internship. They also told us to mention in our application that we were a grant recipient if we applied, so that’s what I did to get my application fast-tracked. I was contacted the next day to schedule an interview.

When I applied to the Bloomberg internship (early October), I had already applied to maybe 30-ish companies. Honestly, I didn’t expect to hear back from any of them. I was mainly applying for the experience of applying and to see if maybe I could get into a university program like Google STEP. From what I’ve heard online, most people who are seriously job hunting can apply to anywhere upwards of 50-100 companies and hear back from maybe 1-5 for an interview. They also will typically apply in early August through December in order to get an internship for the next summer. CS recruiting starts insanely early!

The interviews

My first interview was in early October and was conducted via phone a week after I applied. To prep, I did some Leetcode, watched data structures/algorithms review videos (I had previously taken a DS course at a community college concurrently during high school), and did 2 mock interviews. The actual interview consisted of a brief introduction, a 40 minute Leetcode medium question, and then a Q&A with the interviewer, who is a current Bloomberg engineer.

About 1-2 weeks later, I was contacted to schedule a kind of “remote onsite” style interview using their video conferencing platform. The interview took place in late November and consisted of 2 technical rounds with engineers (very similar to the phone interview) and 1 behavioral round with HR, and took about 3 hours.

A few days later, I was contacted to schedule a final interview with an engineering manager, which occurred in mid-December. It was also via video call and took about 1 hour. It was mostly a conversation about my past technical experience and coursework.

Finally, I received an offer 1 week later.

Of course, I don’t know Bloomberg’s exact hiring criteria for interns, but I think these qualities made me stand out: Being a Grace Hopper grant recipient, knowledge of data structures and the fact that I’ve already completed some college CS coursework prior to attending UC Berkeley, completion of a significant personal project, participation in a college club that gave me real-world software development experience (knowing Git and GitHub is part of this), and my ability to communicate clearly during the interviews.