Guidewire Interview Questions & Reviews

Interview Details – Guidewire's process for interviewing is very streamlined and efficient.

- Initial discussion with recruiter

-Telephone interview with an engineer/architect to perform initial assessment

-Coding test (3 hours, fairly easy if you know Java)

-3 interviews over Skype

The recruiter and initial assessor were easy to speak with and you could tell they perform these interviews often. The 3 face to face (or Skype) interviews weren't as polished. They use somewhat standard questions to interview.

The first interviewer was a stand in and he was nice enough. Explained the process of the company and what he does. He didn't have too many questions.

The second interviewer didn't have video working so he could see me but not the opposite. He was also eating during the interview and quite honestly was just plain rude. He essentially talked for 50 minutes and barely asked any questions.

The third interviewer knew his stuff and really drilled into me. It was late at night and I had been up till midnight the night before coding so he prompted me on some answers and explained where I had things wrong. He was looking for substance and not definitions. This interviewer was much more professional and knowledgeable.

Someone (other than the recruiter) called me with the initial offer details and I received the documents from HR a day later. The docs were fairly standard. Nothing terribly surprising.

Reason for Declining – Compensation didn't warrant an acceptance.

Overall compensation while good wasn't much more than what I make now and considering the 80% travel it just wasn't enough. Getting up at 3am every single Monday, flying out and then returning home Thursday evening week after week, you have to pay someone to do that. I can make as much as they were offering elsewhere and not travel 80% and spend more time with my family.

I wasn't terribly keen on the Skype interviews (difficult to evaluate them as an organization) as well as the rush to get everything done before the end of year (tells me they had extra money in the budget they wanted to use up). Also didn't like the month long training, you're evaluated on a weekly basis and if you fail any part of the training you're cut loose (apparently this happens to 5-10% of the pool of trainees).

On the plus side the benefits were good and you can live anywhere near a major gateway airport. The employees there are very intelligent and you're working with some serious budgets and implementations.

Considering the travel and risk of the position, it just wasn't worth it to me. I decided to keep looking.

Interview Details – Applied through linkedin and they were quick to respond. There wasn't any phone screen. They sent a coding exercise with about a week's time to complete.

They were quick to respond back in about a week with their feedback. However did not provide much details about their decision.

Interview Details – Phone interview, 3 to 4 hours coding test with 4 questions being about JDBC, Iterators, bad code and JMS (optional). Skype interview and finally a 3 hours face to face interviews with 3 different directors/managers. The face to face interviews was the part I loved the most and that has blown all my doubts away. Not only the people interviewing me were very friendly but also were very smart. I've been to some interviews where you are hammered with arrogance and disrespect. It was a completely different experience for me where I got to talk a lot about what I've done what I see for my future and of course answer some brain teaser and some light technical questions. Really looking forward to this new adventure with Guidewire.

Interview Details – I got referred through a recruitment agency. Initially I had little interest in the job as it was in a different city and I had never heard of the company before but the recruiter was quite adamant that I look into it. After a little research and looking at reviews here it was clear this company was above average and had a good work culture so I went for it.
The interview process is long but thorough. It was almost 4 weeks from the initial code test to offer.
Technical exam: Coding exam for 4 hours with 3 coding problems to solve. One on JDBC, another on improving functional but poorly written code and an optional question on either JMS or iterators.
Face-to-face interview: I had 3 individual interviews up to an hour long each. None were particularly technical, focusing mainly on my college projects, communication and people skills. One had some emphasis on problem solving and included a few brain-teasers.

During the face-to-face interviews it was immediately apparent that the interviewers were genuinely happy to work for Guidewire and were all highly intelligent, rational people.
Despite getting an offer in my home city for a higher base salary I chose Guidewire, they made it an easy choice.

Interview Details – Becareful as Guidewire does not keep your personal information confidential. The industry will know you are interviewing (sometimes before you even get the call to set up the interview). After the interview be prepared for lots of gossip and talking about you (Not just internally to Guidewire people but may even call your current employer to tell them you interviewed with Guidewire but are not going to get the job!!!!).

Not uncommon for in person interview to take 6- 8 hours to complete (That is the first in person interview alone!)

Negotiation Details – No negotiation allowed

Interview Details – I met this recruiter through LinkedIn when I inquired about a different job and she thought this one would be more of a fit than the one I inquired about. They were very nice and the company is growing fast so I was very intrigued. I interviewed first with the hiring manager and then with her boss. Both were very friendly and seemed like they would be good to work with, but the job seemed to be very poorly defined. Clearly this is a company with a very buzzword-friendly culture because by the end of the second interview, I was totally confused about what the job actually entails. In the end, it was not only a vaguely defined role with a strange title, also significantly more travel than the recruiter had said, so I opted out and did not continue with the interview process.

Interview Details – One 3 hours coding test, One phone screen, One Skype video interview, and one 3 hours face-to-face interview.

Interview Details – 1. phone interview (basic Java questions and some questions about what I do now)
2. Technical code test (3 coding tests)
3. 2nd phone interview (core Java + JMS questions)
4. Face to Face interview

Interview Details – Multiple interviews both over the phone and in person. Well structured Code Test. Concentrates on the problem at hand, by providing an environment that is up and running.