Bloomberg Television’s Dominic Chu got his start in the industry without any experience in broadcast journalism. In fact, he was working as a Wall Street trader when he responded to a casting call embedded in one of the tickers on Bloomberg.com.

“There are a lot of similarities between a full-throttle newsroom and a trading desk on a trading floor. You’re being blitzed with all kinds of information, and you have to make heads or tails of it in a coherent fashion in as quick a time as possible,” he recalled in a Mediabistro interview.

“It’s kind of like trading during times when there are volatile markets or big economic data releases. You have to deal with lots of information on a real-time basis. I think that that was probably the thing that most prepared me for this kind of job, because in an organization like Bloomberg you’re dealing with a lot of breaking news all the time.”

Read the full interview in So What Do You Do, Dominic Chu?