American Express interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

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American Express

3 rounds | 5 Coding problems

Koushal Goyal

Experienced | Apr 2024

Rejected

Interview preparation journey

Journey

Before the interview with American Express, I revised my core Java and Spring Boot concepts and reviewed the DSA questions I had previously solved. While revising DSA questions, I initially felt discouraged because I couldn't solve some of them. However, I convinced myself that I could solve these problems and practised a lot. I mainly focused on easy and medium-level questions.

Application story

I learned about the job on LinkedIn and applied for it. After 3-4 days, one of their HR representatives contacted me via LinkedIn. The HR asked me some basic questions, such as which technologies I am working with.

Why selected/rejected for the role?

I was rejected in my final round. They asked behavioural questions like why I was leaving my current company and why I wanted to join American Express. I have had four job switches in my five-year career, which I think was the major reason I did not clear this round.

Preparation

Duration: 1 month

Topics: Multithreading, Streams, Spring, Microservice, DSA

Tip

Tip 1: Actually, I took a week off to prepare.

Tip 2: Revise your theoretical concepts and practice easy and medium-level data structure questions.

Application process

Where: Linkedin

Eligibility: In JD 4+ years of experince was mentioned

Resume tip

Tip 1: I keep my resume in a standard format.

Tip 2: Highlight your skills, as HR primarily looks at your skills for screening. Keep the font size at least 12.

Interview rounds

Round

Easy

Video Call

Duration60 minutes

Interview date8 Apr 2024

Coding problem3

In this the interviewer asked me questions about my current project then he asked 2 problem-solving questions from me.
It was in the evening and the interviewer was good.

1. 3Sum

Moderate

15m average time

85% success

0/80

Asked in companies

Given an array arr[] of size n and an integer X. Find if there’s a triplet in the array that sums up to the given integer X.

Problem approach

I had never come across this question. So, I used a brute force approach to solve this, but that was taking O(n^3) time complexity. Then they asked me to optimize it. I was trying to make it in O(n), but I ended up with O(n^2)

Try solving now

2. Reconstruct Itinerary

Moderate

15m average time

85% success

0/80

Asked in companies

Given a list of tickets, find the itinerary in order using the given list.

Example:

Input:
"Chennai" -> "Banglore"
"Bombay" -> "Delhi"
"Goa" -> "Chennai"
"Delhi" -> "Goa"

Output:
Bombay->Delhi, Delhi->Goa, Goa->Chennai, Chennai->Banglore,

Problem approach

when the interviewer explained to me these questions. I used hashing to solve this question. And I solved it.

Try solving now

3. DSA Based

What are the benefits of string as immutable?

Problem approach

These are simple theoretical questions, so I answered them. And for the Singleton pattern, they majorly want to listen to the Double locking mechanism.

Round

Medium

Video Call

Duration60 minutes

Interview date26 Apr 2024

Coding problem1

It was in the afternoon, and the environment was positive. They started with my experience and my current project.

1. Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array

Easy

15m average time

85% success

0/40

Asked in companies

You are given an integer array, filter out this array such that the resulting array would contain only those elements that are not duplicates.

Problem approach

I solved this question by applying for loop, but later on, they asked me to solve it by using Java Streams. There I struggled a little, as I was unsure about using grouping in streams, but later on, I did it with some breakage, I told them I did not recall the exact syntax, but I explained the approach.

Try solving now

Round

Easy

HR Round

Duration30 minutes

Interview date16 May 2024

Coding problem1

1. HR question

It was a managerial and behavioural round in which they asked me about the software lifecycle we are using, and I want to join Amex. Why I am leaving my current company. Why there are 4 switches in my carrier?