I just got an offer from Workday for an entry level SWE role after a pretty nerve-wracking process. Here's what I wish I'd known going in.
The loop for new grad roles
For the university hire track, the loop was: OA: two LeetCode-style problems, 90 minutes. I got one medium and one medium-hard (graph traversal). No SQL, no system design. Phone screen: 1 behavioral + 1 coding problem with a Workday engineer over video. They gave me time to think before coding and didn't rush me. Virtual onsite: 3 rounds. Two coding, one behavioral. The coding was all arrays/strings/hashmaps territory. Nothing too exotic.
What to study
Honestly, LC medium is the ceiling for new grad. I did maybe 80-90 LC problems over 6 weeks: arrays, strings, trees, graphs, dynamic programming basics. HashMap usage came up a lot. Don't overthink it.
The behavioral piece matters more than I expected
They asked things like "tell me about a time you had to learn something quickly" and "describe a project where you had to collaborate under pressure." For new grads they know you have limited work experience so they accept strong internship or class project stories. I used a capstone project story for most of them.
The offer timeline
Got the verbal offer about a week after the onsite. Formal letter took another 4 days. Base was $130k (Pleasanton, hybrid, not fully remote) plus RSUs over 4 years. Standard entry level territory for a non-FAANG company.
One thing I'd tell myself to do earlier
Practice talking through your thought process out loud while coding. I didn't do this until week 4 of prep and it made a huge difference. Workday engineers are patient but they want to see how you think, not just whether you got the answer.
Good luck to everyone recruiting for 2026 new grad cycles.