I applied for the Global Data graduate programme starting September 2015. I applied through employee referral. I didn't get the job. Thus, applying through referral won't get you the job. Let's pass through.
After passing the screening, I was called by a HR employee from NY. The interview lasted about 10 minutes and the only question was "why bloomberg". After 5 minutes I was invited to an interview in London.
1st live interview with two team leaders. One girl one boy, both working for fixed income and funds. The guy was really annoyed by my cv but the girl seemed much more interested. Differently from A&Sales or more specific roles, there are no finance-related questions. Only motivational and regarding the role itself. Make sure you go through the questions you find in here and IMPORTANT to have an overview about the role go into the "review" section here in Glassdoor, where you will find many info about it. Briefly, the role is mainly data entry, project management and crm. Questions:
Talk about yourself; Why bloomberg; why this role; how you imagine the typical data analyst day; how you work with data; what's the link between this role and your previous experience.
I thought it was horrible, but a few minutes after the interview, I received the mail stating I was invited to the next stage, one week later.
2nd live interview (I was said to be the final) with two managers. One guy one girl. To be completely honest with you, I will tell you this. I had no previous financial-related experience, only a data-entry role in a non-financial company and a "restaurant" job. The people I was competing with (you will meet many waiting with you for the interviewer) had previous internship experience in IB or just finance-related professional experience. I was totally out of place but I used this to motivate myself. The interview started first with the guy and then he left (you will understand why) leaving me with the girl. He started asking about my previous "restaurant" experience, laughing at my face. I knew this was just to see how I handled this situation but I answered straight away with no panic. Then he stressed on the typical food products "I am hungry, would you advice this or that?". Still, no panic, this was just to stress me. Finally, when the girl came in, he introduced me like "this guy has totally no experience in Finance but he worked in a restaurant". He left, but I was ok. The rest of the interview was mainly motivational, asking about the role itself. But the girl seemed much more interested. However, I thought I handled the interview in a very nice way and it was way better than the first one. Two days later I received a call saying that I was not chosen, mainly because I didn't have much experience in finance and I was not financially literate to handle the job.
Guys, to be honest, just sell your skills if you don't have professional experience in finance. This is where I think I failed, I could have been much more direct and better articulate my answer, but honestly this is the only thing I can blame of myself. This role is mainly data entry, so try to know some VBA stuff and modelling which might be interesting for them to know. This was my second ever application for Bloomberg, but both ended up at the final stage with no interest because of my lack of experience. Moral of the story, sell yourself but please don't focus on the fact that you DO NOT have experience in finance but you DO have it in a retail environment because this won't make you look more humble or financial literate. Well, just show them that you can handle working with data. Answer straight away. Be clear and go straight to the point.