American Express interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview
SDE - 1
American Express
4 rounds | 4 Coding
problems
Selected Interview preparation journey
Journey
I started learning DSA in my 2nd year, and the Coding Ninjas portal helped me solve DSA questions. If I got stuck, it also provided solutions. It really helped me prepare for DSA, and I was able to crack the company.
Application story
A company visited our college in the 3rd year for internship opportunities with a PPO offer.
It conducted 4 interview rounds, mainly focused on DSA and core concepts.
I cleared all the rounds and received both the internship and PPO offer.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
Selected: The Coding Ninjas portal helped me clear all the DSA rounds. I learned everything from basic to advanced concepts through the Coding Ninjas platform.
Preparation
Duration: 3 months
Topics: Data Structures, OOPs, System Design, Algorithms, DP
Tip 1: Don’t memorize the solution; instead, focus on finding the pattern.
Tip 2: Don’t hesitate during the interview.
Tip 3: Always start with the brute-force approach in the interview.
Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: 7 CGPA, (Salary Package - 15 LPA)
Tip 1: Show your projects.
Tip 2: Don’t mention anything you don’t know.
Interview rounds
01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Test
Duration60 minutes
Interview date14 Jun 2023
Coding problem1
It was a one-hour round that contained only DSA questions.
1. Reverse the String
Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
You are given a string 'STR'. The string contains [a-z] [A-Z] [0-9] [special characters]. You have to find the reverse of the string.
For example:
If the given string is: STR = "abcde". You have to print the string "edcba".
follow up:
Try to solve the problem in O(1) space complexity.
Problem approach
Easy problem. We can directly reverse the string using a loop or built-in functions.
Time complexity: O(N)
02
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration60 minutes
Interview date15 Jun 2023
Coding problem1
Online coding round on the HackerRank platform.
1. Binary Tree Zigzag Traversal
Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
You have been given a Binary Tree of 'N' nodes, where the nodes have integer values. Your task is to print the zigzag traversal of the given tree.
Note:
In zigzag order, level 1 is printed from left to right fashion, level 2 is printed from right to left. and level 3 is printed from left to right again, and so on…..
For example:
For the given binary tree
The zigzag traversal is [1, 4, 3, 5, 2, 7, 6]
Problem approach
First, I started with an approach like using BFS to solve the problem. But then he asked how I could print it in spiral form.
So, I thought of using a flag to reverse the order of nodes at alternate levels.
He agreed with the approach, and then I coded the solution.
In the end, we discussed the time complexity, which is O(N).
03
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration60 minutes
Interview date19 Jun 2023
Coding problem1
It was a 1-hour round with only DSA questions.
1. Count nodes of linked list
Easy
0/40
Asked in company
Given the head of a singly linked list of integers, find and return its length.
Example:
The length of the list is 4. Hence we return 4.
Note:
Exercise caution when dealing with edge cases, such as when the head is NULL. Failing to handle these edge cases appropriately may result in a runtime error in your code.
Problem approach
I started with an approach where I run a loop and check if a node's value is odd; if it is, I increment the count.
The interviewer was okay with the approach, so I started writing the code, and it worked as expected.
In the end, we discussed the time complexity. It was at most O(N) if all the node values are odd.
04
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration60 minutes
Interview date19 Jun 2023
Coding problem1
It was a normal round where she asked me about my internship experience, projects, and some basic questions about MySQL.
Here's your problem of the day 
Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company
Skill covered: Programming
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