American Express

Role: Software Engineer Trainee (Internship + FTE)

College: On-Campus

Interview Date: August 2021

Interview Type: On-Campus (Internship + Full-Time)

Result: Not Specified

Difficulty: Medium

Rounds: 4 rounds (1 Coding Test + 3 Interview Rounds)

Topics Asked: Coding (Data Structures, Algorithms), Projects, C vs C++, OOPS (Polymorphism, Constructors, Function Overloading/Overriding, Destructors, Inheritance, Class/Object, Struct/Class), DBMS (Primary/Foreign Key, ACID properties, Locking System), Exception Handling, Access Specifiers, Types of Trees, Python (Operators, Programming), Java Output Questions, "Why Amex?"

Experience:

American Express visited the campus in August 2021 for the Software Engineer Trainee position. The selection process included one coding test and three interview rounds.

Round 1: Online Coding Test
Conducted on Codility, this round had 3 coding questions to be solved in 1 hour 30 minutes. A notable aspect was that 80% of the test cases were hidden, making it challenging to verify code correctness. A tip suggested solving at least 2 coding questions correctly.

Round 2: Technical Interview 1
After a brief self-introduction, the interviewer asked about the candidate's projects, including technologies used and their role. Core CS questions followed: "Difference between C and C++," "What is polymorphism? Explain constructor with its types," "Explain all the features of OOPS (with examples)," "Function overloading vs overriding," "What is a destructor? Can we overload it?", "What is inheritance and what are the types of inheritance?", "Difference between class and object?", "Difference between structure and class?". The interviewer also asked, "why Amex?". Tips included preparing questions from any internships or certification courses and being thorough with all core computer science subjects.

Round 3: Technical Interview 2
This round also started with "Tell me something about yourself." The interviewer then delved into project details. DBMS concepts were questioned: "Primary key & foreign Key Concept," "Explain ACID properties," and "Explain the locking system in dbms." Other questions included "What is polymorphism and why do we use inheritance?", "How to handle exceptions in c++?", "Explain access specifiers?", and "Explain the types of trees." Coding tasks involved writing a program to swap 2 variables without using a third variable and a Python program to demonstrate Python skills. Questions on Python operators and tricky Java output questions were also part of this round. A question about "www root directory" was also posed.