TEAM AMERICAN EXPRESS: WHEN, WHERE, AND HOW?

April 29, 2022,

Curious about what is so special about this date. Find out later 😉

Hi Geeks! I am Ritika, a final-year B.Tech student pursuing my bachelor’s in Computer Science from KIET. I have been part of many tech programs like Microsoft Learn Student Community, DSC KIET, and others. I am the winner of American Express’s Makeathon 2022, and Smart India Hackathon 2022 Grand Finalist.

Internships are a very crucial part of one’s carrier and it becomes more important if you are looking for a landing a dream job. There are various ways opting which one can land an internship. But, I want to highlight the “HACKATHON WAY” of landing an internship. Often we tend to ignore the value of hackathons and on my journey, you will be amazed to know how the hiring procedures are rapidly changing.

So, this summer I bagged an Intern + Full-time offer from American Express! And it might be weird to you that I gave zero Online Assessments, and zero interviews to land the offer.

Excited? tighten your belts and join my journey to AmEx!

All about the OPPORTUNITY:

American Express conducts “MAKEATHON”, which is a diversity hiring challenge and is conducted every year (Check-The-Opportunity!).

“MAKEATHON” is a team-based competition that follows the standard hackathon format with an idea submission phase (Round 1) and a Hackathon/ prototype building stage (Round 2). Teams had the opportunity to choose 1 out of 4 exciting themes centered on the ever-dynamic Fintech universe!

The four themes were:

Reinvent Digital Lending

Investment Solutions

Smart Cities

Open Innovation Under Fintech

Program Timeline:

PHASES OF THE HACKATHON:

The hackathon was divided into two phases:

[1] IDEATION PHASE

• In the Ideation phase, teams had to submit their ideas in a particular PPT format and an intro about the idea (My idea intro was nearly 300 words).
• The idea has to be one of the above four themes and my team picked the theme “Smart Cities”. The reason for the same was that our team could think of many ideas that would fall into this category and we deemed that we can use any American Express product for building the idea. This theme also has a versatile role in the CSR activities of American Express and hence we targeted the same.

>> Some checks for the PPT that I had in my mind were:

• Make the High-Level Design highly readable and easy to understand.
• Have a short video that would walk through the High-Level Design and increase our chances of selection.
• Add a rough Low-Level Design including all the tech stack we were to use.
• Make sure to include how the implementation of the idea would improve a certain product/ service of an organization. For example, improving the security of lending money.

After a wait of around 3 weeks, here comes the magical part! Out of 3961 teams, my team was one of the TOP 8 teams whose ideas were shortlisted for the mentoring phase.

YEP, YOU KNOW HOW IT FEELS 😎

[2] MENTORING PHASE

In this phase, each team was assigned a mentor. And here comes the best part! the mentors were none other than Software Engineers at American Express! Isn’t it amazing the kind of exposure one gets being directly mentored by a Software Engineer when you are in you are a sophomore or a pre-final student is none other than bliss!

The mentoring sessions were nearly month-long regular meetups with the mentor and the program manager for MAKEATHON. The teams had to work on their ideas under their mentors’ guidance.

Month-long my team was iteratively developing our project, every week we had to present the progress of the project, the procedures we were opting to develop the project, the latency of the project (very important), the algorithms we opted for, the type of database we were using (we implemented graph-based database), and the list is endless.

Mentors evaluated us on the basis of how we were tackling a particular challenge, our presentation skills, and how we were targeting the revenue/CSR generating streams for American Express (AmEx is a highly active CSR organization (Click HERE to know more)

My Learnings from the mentoring phase were:

Here are some key points that I learned during the month-long mentoring phase.

Edge Cases

• Dealing aptly with the edge cases is key to solving a problem. Our team had immense fun dealing with the edge cases. We used to discuss the edge cases with our mentor and our mentor helped us to tackle all the blockers.
• Having one-on-one conversations regarding your approach and doubt really helped me to get out of my shell and present my approach.

Latency is the Key

• Only developing a project was not our team’s target but we highly focussed on the latency of the APIs. (a key to all the backend developers like me)

Communication skills save you every time

• Hackathons are not just about coding. They are a lot more about how efficiently one links a product to a problem and how nicely one presents it to the jury.

Writing Clean Code

• Every hackathon includes submitting your code for review and writing clean and readable code gets you out of the league. Having a good markdown for your project, names of the variables, and dividing the project into less coupled modules all are included in writing clean code.

Data Structures and Algorithm is a lifetime strength

• DSA is not a problem! Treat it as your weapon to solve a problem. Having good DSA practice saves you all the time.

Result Time:

Finally after month-long hustle, on April 22, 2022, my team had to give our final presentation to the Amex jury comprising of the following technology leaders: (highly obliged to have the opportunity to present in front of these inspiring women!)

Based on the feedback of our mentors and the scores of the jury the final TOP 3 teams were declared. The teams who got into the TOP 3 were given a two-month internship offer (to second-year students) and six-months internship + Full-time offers (to third-year students).

The rest of the 5 teams in the TOP 8 teams landed interviews for Software Engineering roles at American Express.

Our Team bagged the second rank in the hackathon and on April 29, 2022 (surprise reveal! 😁) I was given an Intern + Full Time offers with INR 50K cash prize and these cool swags!

MY TAKEAWAYS:

• Be a great orator and try to sell your idea with a story.
• Use of good DSA and clean code writing practices increase your chance of winning. (I refer to Clean Code by Robert Martin for the same )
• Have reasoning of why have you used a particular technology and why not another?
• While ideating, the approach should include what benefit my idea would be to the company that is organizing the hackathon (eg AMEX in this case)

FAQ Section:

1. What is the allowed Team size?

• The allowed team size was 1–4 members.

2. Are inter-college teams allowed?

• Nope, inter-college teams were not allowed.

3. How can one keep a track of such opportunities?

• The best and the most underrated way is to subscribe to newsletters of HackerEarth, Devfolio, Unstop, Devpost, etc…
• Be a part of great communities like Codess.Cafe 😎
• Be active on Twitter! ( you will meet great developers and communities there)

4. I don’t have much developer experience. Should I participate?

• Hackathons are a great platform for building your developer experience. Taking part in hackathons and working in teams teaches one a lot!

5. How to make you your idea stand unique?

• Make sure your idea is not a build before and should be a new one.
• Focus on the following :

1. What is the need for the idea?

2. What is the target audience of your idea?

3. How to implement the idea with the least investment and more outcome.

4. Sell your idea with a story.

5. Add revenue-generating figures to your idea.

This was all from my side. I hope the article helps you achieve your goal. If this article was helpful to you, smash the clap button and show some love ❤️. Feel free to reach out to me for any queries through my LinkedIn, and Twitter. Give your best shot and success will be yours!

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