From College to CAPS: My Graduate Journey with Guidewire

Introduction - A Bit About Myself  

I am Nikit. I am a software consultant at Guidewire. I joined Guidewire in early January 2020, and I am working in the Cloud Assurances team. I love to play sports with football being the one that I enjoy the most. I also like to watch TV series, travel, and meet new people from different cultures and backgrounds.  

Choosing Guidewire 

The past year has been roller coaster ride for me. Graduating with a software engineering degree, I had to face the reality that my college days were over. I started exploring software companies based in Ireland and I found out about Guidewire, which had some of the best reviews on Glassdoor. After learning about the work they do and the core values of the company, I immediately applied using LinkedIn and I started my interview process at Guidewire.  

Graduate Life with Guidewire  

I work in our Cloud Assurance Production Services team (CAPS) and our team plays a major role in Guidewire’s transition to the cloud. Our team gives flexibility to a cloud customer to continue changing to their production system—namely defect resolution, enhancements, regulatory changes, and functional testing. We usually work with post-production delivery solutions. I started my training as soon as I joined Guidewire, I was assigned a mentor, who I relied on during multiple occasions through my training and sometimes even now while working on project.  

The first few weeks of training was on fundamentals of Guidewire’s InsuranceSuite, after which you have to go through a fundamental’s certification. Then I started my product training, which I received my professional certification for. This has been very helpful and important. As a consultant you must know the product that you are working on. Especially if you know nothing about the insurance industry- as was the case with me- training would help ease you through the process and understand Guidewire’s products. 

“Working from home has both advantages and disadvantages. I’d say that it has been a great experience for me, personally. I feel that our management team and companies’ policies combined to ensure that I had all the right ingredients to be successful.”  

What Did The Recruitment Process Look Like?  

The recruitment process involved Codility test(s), a video call interview, and an on-site interview. The on-site interview involved one technical round, a Hiring Manager Interview & a cultural Interview. I really liked that the interviewers were friendly and aligned to Guidewire’s core values that I read about - Integrity, Rationality & Collegiality. 

The best advice I can give is to prepare for the interview is to practice concocting algorithms for real life problems on all the different website like Hacker-rank, Codility, etc. Be confident in what you know, and just say no if you don’t know the answer to something. As a grad you are not supposed to know everything anyways.  

Graduate Training and Project Work in Lockdown 

When I first joined things were normal and everyone was still going to the office. Early March 2020, I was undergoing my last certification before starting to work on a project when I heard our office was shutting down and everyone would have to work remotely due to increase in Covid cases in Ireland. This meant I had to complete my last certification from home and that I would be starting the actual work from my home. 

WFH: Navigating My First Project Remotely  

I started working on my first project working from home which was, in many ways, a challenging task. This was going to be a demanding, ongoing project, so I needed to get up to speed quickly. To make sure that project onboarding went smoothly my team lead made sure that I didn't have too much other work on my plate at that time. This gave me enough space to familiarize myself with all the new tools I would need, and my mentor was always a Zoom call away to help me through that process. Working from home has both advantages and disadvantages. I’d say that it has been a great experience for me personally, I feel that our management team and companies’ policies combined to ensure that I had all the right ingredients to be successful. 

Interested in starting your career with us? Keep an eye on our careers page for graduates roles in Spain, Ireland, Poland, Malaysia and San Mateo.