Hello Everyone!
So I will be sharing with you all the entire experience that I had during my summer internship selection as a Technology Intern at American Express. I had one Online Assessment followed by two Rounds of interviews out of which one was technical and the other was a mix of technical and HR.
Round 1: Online Assessment (Coding test)
Time: 1hr 30mins
The Coding round was taken on the Codility platform and consisted of 3 Coding Questions and had No Negative Marking.
One problem was from graphs, one from priority queues, and the third one was a basic easy problem.
So these were the three problems in the Online Assessment and I was able to do all three not exactly in a very optimized way but my output was correct for the visible test cases but in the Amex Test, they do not show all the test cases and have hidden test cases.
Tips :
- If you are sitting for the American Express test specifically: You need to be good at your pace, also make sure when you are confident about your solution to submit it right away because Amex sees how quickly were you able to answer the problem.
- Make sure you take care of the constraints since it might work for the visible TCS but won’t get accepted for all the test cases.
- Read the problem statement properly and Do not sit solving a problem for a long time if it is not working, look for the other problems first(there are high chances of other problems being easier than the one you are stuck at, thus helping you to save time.)
- So after the coding round the next day, 7 students were shortlisted for the interviews and we were given a day to prepare for it.
- And the day started since my name was the first on the list I had a slight hint that I will be the first to be interviewed in our batch and that’s what exactly happened I was then given a Webex link and there were different 15 panels who were taking the interviews I was told 2 mins prior the panel number to which I had to redirect.
Round 2: Technical Interview
Time: 1 hour
The interviewer started off with his introduction and asked to do the same.
- He asked me what all projects were that I had worked on: Since in my Introduction, I mentioned I had worked on Front End Web Development, I briefed him about all my projects and the tech stacks used.
- Given an array of integers, write a program to reverse the elements of an array: The interviewer asked me to present my screen and code the above problem in front of him on my preferred IDE, so I started coding the solution along with explaining my approach side by side and also told him the time and space complexities it works on.
- He then asked me about LinkedList and asked me to tell what I know about it and Write a program to create a LinkedList and Print all its elements: I told him about the general working and its operations along with the time complexities that it works on followed by the code for printing the linked list elements.
After that, the interviewer seemed satisfied and then he started asking me basics from the core and he also asked me a question which was why do I want to join Amex, and since I had read about it prior that really helped to answer that.
Round 3: Techincal + Hr Interview
Time: Approx 50 mins
- My 2nd round was then a mix of technical and hr round. However, it varied for my friends they had a normal discussion in round 1 and then a technical round in the 2nd round. So it’s highly unpredictable and totally depends upon the interviewer.????????
- So Round 2 started and the interviewer was a lady and starting up with my introduction she jumped to my projects and asked me some questions about my projects like their working and even asked to show one of my projects to her. Then she also gave me some scenarios wherein I was supposed to come up with possible solutions.
- Then she asked me if I want to launch a project how will I be ensuring its profit simultaneously if it is taking almost a year to build like the question was twisted slightly which I am not able to recall exactly but I told her that probably we should launch our product and then make further advancements and add features as we get them so this way we will be able to ensure profit at stage 0 which she really liked. Apart from this, there were few more questions like these she basically wanted to test if I am quickly able to respond to her or not. Also, there were instances where I felt like what else now can I tell her like I told everything I can think of but still the interviewer was willing to answer something more. So for this, I kept interacting and I realized what was she emphasizing once I told her that she seemed satisfied!????
- So that was it after this she asked me if I had any questions for her. so if you feel like the interview was good and you have a chance of being selected it’s always a good practice to ask something because it shows you are inquisitive and wants to know about the firm. So I asked her about ways in which Amex generates its revenue and some models that Amex works upon. So very nicely she explained to me everything and this was the end of our discussion.
On the very next day, results were out and I was one of the selected candidates.
Results: Selected
Tips:
- Make your DSA strong! Practice each day and make sure you are solving at least 3 to 4 problems daily.
- Prepare your core subjects DBMS, OOPS, OS and Networking very well.
- Solve puzzles that are there in GFG and also write down the HR questions which are common for almost every company.
- Make at least one good project so that you have something to discuss with the interviewer.
- Also, there is a tip do not to mention in your resume what you have not done by yourself or even if you do not remember it. If you are not confident about something rather keeping it there and not being able to answer it which would backfire on you only, it’s better not to mention it.
- Mention things that you are thorough with because interviewers basically want to test you on the basis of what you are able to answer and not on how much you have written in your resume!
- If you have done this all by all your heart, great then you are good to go and clear your tests and interviews.
All the very best!