GradStories from GradIreland: Anam Ali

Anam Ali, Consultant Developer, Guidewire

What does your job involve in a normal week?

My day to day tasks involve looking at customer requirements and how I can develop solutions for them, working alongside developers, to meet the customers needs.

What skills do you need to be successful in your role?

It is essential to have good technical skills, which makes it much easier to integrate into the company. Two other skills which I would consider really useful are good communication skills and time management skills. Communications skills are vital as we have a diverse office, and you need to be comfortable working with different people in different teams. Time management skills are also hugely important since we have so many deadlines and we need to ensure that we prioritise our work properly.

What do you love about your job?

I love that fact that I’m always learning something new, I’m always creating something new and that’s something that really resonates with me as I am a creative person. I’m also surrounded by a great, smart group of people so there isn’t a day that I am not learning something new.

How did you get into your job?

I studied in DIT, and in third year I did a six month internship. So I interviewed for Guidewire and the very next day I got an email saying I got the job, which as great. It was a six months rotational internship, where I worked in two departments; product development and professional services. I learned a lot, especially technical coding skills such as Angular JS and GoSu, which is Guidewire’s own coding language. Following on from the internship I was fortunate enough to be offered a graduate position.