Guideline Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 8 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Guideline.
Guideline
Senior Software Engineer
Senior Average Negative experience No offer 1 round
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Phone screen
Interview formats
Coding Technical Behavioral
So I applied to Guideline, and the recruiter told me I'd have the typical chat with a team lead to see if we're a fit. But, surprise! My first meeting was with the team lead, and we immediately went into a Coderpad assessment. They'd emailed ahead saying it would involve solving an Rspec example set, but the recruiter also said two engineers would be on the call, yet only the lead showed up. The assessment itself wasn't great (check out the Interview Question below). I did get to ask about the job afterward, but it felt pointless by then. The 'lead' couldn't even answer simple questions about the Rails version (they're on an old, unsupported one), the codebase size (unsure), or how important security and testing are (seems like low priority). They're planning to hire 20 more developers onto a team that already has 50. Seriously? That's not a team I'd want to join.
Confirmed questions5 questions
- Implement a Ruby method called 'contains_all?' using Rspec examples provided.
- What version of Rails are you using?
- How large is the codebase?
Guideline
Software Engineer
Staff Average Positive experience No offer 5 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen Panel
Interview formats
Coding Technical Behavioral
Started with a recruiter call. Then had a couple of coding tests with managers, one focused on a business domain problem via CoderPad, another on database modeling, and a third on using an event-driven system for business logic. Wrapped up with a discussion about past experience with a product manager and an engineering manager.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Tell me about a past project where you demonstrated leadership and customer focus.
Guideline
Software Engineer
Senior Easy Negative experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen
Interview formats
Coding Technical
The recruiter call was good, but the technical interview was not. They said I could do the tech interview in JavaScript, which is fine, but the actual interview was an object-oriented problem instead of the promised write-a-function-to-pass-tests format. I spent most of the time dealing with compiler errors. The EM was also pretty rude. I told the recruiter that the prompt wasn't what they said it would be, and that it was frustrating since I spent a week studying for it, including over the holiday. I also mentioned that JavaScript isn't ideal for OOP. They said they wanted someone with more OOP experience, which was weird because it wasn't in the job description and OOP is something I'm good at.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Write a JavaScript object-oriented solution to a given problem, including passing associated tests.
Guideline Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Guideline interview reports.
“Given inputs and supply lists, implement Contains_all to return true if all inputs are in the supply list.”
Read reports →“Implement the contains_all? method”
Read reports →“How large is the codebase?”
Read reports →“Is testing not too important?”
Read reports →“What version of Rails are you using?”
Read report →“Is security a low priority?”
Read report →“Write a JavaScript object-oriented solution to a given problem, including passing associated tests.”
Read report →“Can you make these tests pass?”
Read report →“Tell me about frontend design.”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 8 Guideline interview reports.