16 months ago

shwetank19101 • 20

On Campus interview at IIIT, Naya Raipur

CGPA: 7.0 and above

Course: B. Tech (all branches - CSE, ECE, Data Science and AI)

Location: Hybrid (Gurgaon)

Internship Stipend: INR 85,000 per month

Full-time CTC: 18LPA (*approx)

Role: Management Information System and Advanced Data Analytics

Round-1: Resume Shortlisting

There was no written/aptitude/coding test, but the candidates were shortlisted based on their resumes. So, it is essential to edit your resume according to the job description provided by Amex to clear this round. Out of 150+ candidates, around 50 were selected for further interviews.

Interview-1

Technical Interview - 1hr

After the introduction, I was asked a mental aptitude puzzle (like the ones available on geeksforgeeks) which I answered correctly in a few minutes. Next, the interviewer wanted to test my data science skills in python language, so he gave me access to his PC. It had a software already opened, which Amex themselves use for data science-related work. He gave me a dataset along with a series of questions about fundamental exploratory data analysis. I solved all of them with some discussion among us, which took most of the interview time. Then we moved to some basic SQL questions. After this, there was a discussion on my previous internships, and the interview was done.

This interview was quite vigorous and made me a bit nervous in between as I had to solve many questions in just an hour but the key is to remain calm and focused in all situations.

Interview - 2

Technical + bit of HR - 45mins

As the previous round was more about hardcore data science tasks, this round primarily focused on DBMS and SQL, as these are also essential skills to have for a data analyst(duh :-p).

After a yet again, another introduction, I was given a series of SQL questions on basic topics like group, join, nested queries, etc., with discussion on DBMS concepts like ACID properties and Normalization. These questions were not that difficult but just basic definitions and practical use cases of the concepts.

Now comes a bit of HR part. Since Amex is mainly a credit card related firm, he asked me questions like how a credit card company makes profit, the reason behind Amex being the biggest credit card company in terms of revenue generated. I was able to answer these questions very thoughtfully as I had watched some youtube videos about Amex and credit card companies in general and the interviewer seemed impressed. Later the interviewer asked me about my family background, and the interview was concluded.

The interviewer for this round seemed quite chill and friendly, so the interview felt smooth and non-hectic.

Interview - 3

Technical + HR -1hr

In this round, I had two interviewers, one had a technical background, and the other was HR. After my introduction(yes, for the third time), the technical interviewer asked me some questions on SQL. We had quite a long discussion on joins operations in SQL about their necessities and their uses in websites and softwares. Then we deep-dived into my projects.

Now comes the HR interviewer, asking the 'patent HR questions' like why I want to join their organization. Then we had a conversation about the co-curricular section of my resume. Although these questions are not difficult, I still advise you to think about them once so that you can answer them fluently during the interview.

And that's the end of the interview.

Verdict - Selected

Tips and Takeaways

-- Since this is a data analyst position, you need to be well-versed with data science in python language. Also, DBMS and SQL are important for the role, but the questions on SQL were not that difficult, so a few days of practice should be enough.

-- Along with mental aptitude puzzles, some of my friends were asked to do some elementary level case studies ( also available on geeksforgeeks).

-- This is my observation that since Amex is a banking-related firm, they expect you to be fluent in English and have good communication skills too.

-- Imp Note: Even if the interviewer does not ask you explicitly, try to tell them if you know something about the functioning of Amex, comparison with its competitors, or anything related to Amex, to show that you really care about the position and have done good research on your part because this impresses them a lot and gives you an extra edge to get selected over your fellow competitors. You can easily find videos about this on youtube. This won't even take much of your time(just half an hour or so) but can really benefit you in the interview.

All the best...