Building a Career at Bloomberg: A Recruiter’s Perspective

Originally published on bloomberg.com

At Bloomberg, we have been free of titles from the start. The way we are structured allows our employees to network more freely, learn about new career paths, and pursue them. And we openly encourage this kind of movement across departments, locations, and time zones.

Movement like this is the norm at Bloomberg, and is designed to happen regularly. Our structure is designed to encourage internal mobility and we offer training, skill development, and tools to help our people succeed along the way. Here, an experienced recruiter at Bloomberg explains how our structure allows for a multitude of possibilities – and the impact it’s had on her own career.

Jacquie Lennon

Jacquie is a believer in always raising your hand for new opportunities, and leveraging the benefits of Bloomberg’s open culture to make it happen. Learn more about her experience and perspective.

I manage entry-level recruitment for Bloomberg’s Engineering department. My team gets to work with a lot of tech talent in order to attract the brightest software engineers to start successful careers here.

A pivotal moment in my Bloomberg career came when I had a conversation with my managers about the work we were doing to increase diversity in tech. I articulated that I was super excited about this idea and curious how we could do more. Together with my managers, we were able to design a new role that didn’t exist at the time that allowed me to go deeper to meet this need within the department. They listened, I got the support I needed, and that was really the moment that set my career in the direction that I wanted it to go.

Since then, I’ve been really proud of the work the team has been able to do related to diversity in tech. There are now several team members who work on a variety of different initiatives to ensure we’re doing everything we can to bring the best people here and to diversify the talent base in our organization.

The benefits of Bloomberg’s structure

Candidates often ask me, what does it mean to have a structure like Bloomberg’s? How can someone grow at the company? And I’m able to share my own experience: if you can express what you’re excited about and go deep in that area, you can move teams, you can lead teams. Bloomberg has supported me through that, so I’ve been able to carve out my own career journey here. It’s not just one ladder to climb. This is a big part of Bloomberg’s culture that really excites candidates.

What a career path at Bloomberg can look like

People respond to our culture with curiosity. I think that a lot of industries around us are perceived as following promotions or titles. But I think what’s really great about Bloomberg is that people are empowered to try new things, and to share good ideas with the most senior people across the organization. That’s what’s kept me here and kept my team really productive.

There is no single path. If you don’t want to be a people leader, you can lead in other ways, or you can go deep into a subject area and become an expert, or try new and different things. I’ve seen careers develop in many different ways here, which I think speaks a lot to our culture.

The importance of a network

From day one, employees are able to build their networks within the Bloomberg community right away. And if you’re interested in something, and you tell someone, it’s likely they’ll connect you to someone else who can help you learn more about that topic, or connect or grow in that area, which I think is a really great aspect of our open and collaborative culture.

What we look for at Bloomberg goes beyond just what’s on someone’s resumé. We’re seeking out people who are intellectually curious, strong problem solvers, and want to work on things that matter.