Went through the Bloomberg product designer loop earlier this year. Design interviews at Bloomberg are different from most consumer tech companies and I want to be specific about how.
Context: 8 years in product/brand design, agency background, had been mostly working on B2C products before this.
The portfolio review. Bloomberg's design team is thoughtful and they read your portfolio ahead of time. The review conversation was less "walk me through your projects" and more probing questions on specific decisions. Why did you choose this navigation pattern. What did you learn from user testing that changed the design. How did you handle stakeholder pushback on a design direction. Prepare to defend your choices, not just narrate them.
What they seemed to respond to: work that demonstrates complexity management. The bloomberg terminal is a dense, information-heavy product used by experts. They're not looking for minimalist consumer app aesthetics. They want to see that you can design for cognitive load, that you can layer information for experts vs. novices, that you've worked with complex data visualizations.
The design exercise. They gave a take-home prompt before the onsite. Something in the financial information space (I won't give the exact prompt but it was real-feeling). The presentation was a full onsite round, 45 minutes. I walked through my process: research, problem framing, sketches, wireframes, rationale. Questions were sharp: what assumptions are you making, who is the user, how would you measure success.
The people. Met designers, a PM, and a researcher in my panel. Bloomberg seems to actually invest in UX research as a discipline. The researcher asked pointed questions about my approach to generative vs. evaluative research. Know the difference.
What tripped me up. My portfolio was heavier on consumer and brand work. I needed more explicit density/data-viz work to really land strongly. If you have that in your portfolio, lead with it. If you don't, think about how to frame your complexity-management experience even in simpler contexts.
Process was about 7 weeks. Didn't get the offer, but the feedback was specific and respectful, which is honestly rare.