Updated September 2026 · 9 min read · US multinational financial services corporation
Most large employers run one global process with local variations. American Express publishes its student-programme stages country by country, and the differences are not cosmetic.
In the United States, you record a one-way video answering behavioural questions, then take two HireVue interviews, 30 minutes each. In Canada, applying to the equivalent internship, there is no video recording and no test at all — two live interviews with different hiring leaders, then a recruiter phone screen. In Mexico, four in-person interviews and no video. In the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Hong Kong, an assessment centre with group discussions and case studies, a format that appears in none of the US programmes.
Same company, same year, same seniority — four materially different funnels.
This matters practically because most Amex preparation content describes the US process as though it were universal. If you are applying in Canada, preparing for a HireVue video you will never sit is wasted effort. Check which country's programme page applies to you before anything else.
Amex is also unusual in that it names its interview vendor on its own careers site, which almost no comparable employer does. Here is what it publishes, by region.
United States — Undergraduate Internship (10 weeks) and Sophomore Finance Internship (9 weeks):
United Kingdom — Undergraduate Internship (10 weeks): pre-recorded video answering role-specific questions, then an "assessment centre that includes competency-based interviews, case studies and group discussions."
United Kingdom — MBA Internship: one or two consecutive interviews, then two one-hour senior leader interviews. No video recording stage.
United Kingdom — Technology Apprentice (18 months): an "online coding assessment" with a 7-day completion window, then a "Virtual Discovery Day" with engineering teams comprising two consecutive 30-minute interviews covering technical and coding ability plus leadership competencies.
Canada — Internship (16 weeks): virtual interview with a hiring leader on leadership and soft skills, then a virtual interview with a different hiring leader on background and role fit, then a final recruiter phone screen.
Germany: screening, business interview, then a final round or assessment centre with competency interviews, case studies and group discussions.
Italy and Spain: screening call or pre-recorded video interview, then a business interview or assessment centre.
Japan — Graduate: recruiter phone screen, on-site Career Forum interview, then in-person hiring leader interviews with up to two further rounds.
Singapore — Undergraduate: on-site group interview with an assessment or presentation task, then a one-to-one with a hiring leader.
Singapore — PhD: a single on-site day covering three rounds — technical, coding and behavioural.
Hong Kong: assessment centre with group discussions and competency questions.
India: recruited through universities, with no numbered stages published.
For experienced hires, Amex publishes no equivalent process page. Candidate reports describe a shorter shape: HR screening, hiring manager interview, then a director or department head interview, with a coding assessment added for technical roles.
Note what is not on that list. Amex publishes no numerical, verbal, logical, situational-judgement or personality test for any student programme. Prep sites list them; Amex does not.
What Amex does describe:
The asynchronous video recording covers behavioural and competency questions relevant to the role. This is a one-way recording — you answer to camera with no interviewer present.
The two 30-minute HireVue interviews in the US are live and scheduled, not recorded. This is the detail most guides get wrong: Amex uses the same platform for two structurally different things, an asynchronous recording early and live interviews later.
Technical assessments are explicitly role-gated. Amex's own US wording: "Candidates applying to Tech roles will also complete a technical assessment." The UK Technology Apprentice route has an online coding assessment with a published 7-day window — a rare piece of officially stated timing.
Assessment centres in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Hong Kong combine competency-based interviews, case studies and group discussions.
HireVue — officially confirmed by Amex, for the two live 30-minute interviews in the US student programmes. This is client-side confirmation on Amex's own careers page, which is stronger evidence than a vendor case study.
The asynchronous video platform is not named. It may well also be HireVue, but Amex does not say so and neither should anyone else.
The technical and coding assessment platform is not named for any region, including the UK apprentice coding test and the India campus assessment.
Prep-site guesses exist and are appropriately hedged even by the sites making them — one advises using SHL or CEB practice material because Amex "may" use these, and mentions HackerRank, Codility and HireVue's coding product as possibilities. None is confirmed. HireVue's own customer page does not list Amex, so there is no vendor-side corroboration for anything.
India campus hiring is described in candidate aggregations as an online assessment of roughly 60 to 120 minutes covering data-structures coding, computer-science fundamentals, debugging and output questions and occasional aptitude, then two or three technical rounds plus HR. The platform is not identified, and those timings are candidate-reported rather than official.
Technology versus everything else is explicit and official. Amex states that US tech applicants take an additional technical assessment. UK technology apprentices get a coding assessment plus a Virtual Discovery Day that non-technical applicants do not see.
PhD hires in Singapore face the most compressed format: one on-site day, three rounds covering technical, coding and behavioural content.
MBA candidates in the UK skip the recorded video entirely and go straight to consecutive interviews.
Experienced hires face a shorter, interview-led process with no published video or assessment stage, plus a coding test for technical roles.
There is also a distinct early-entry route worth knowing about: the American Express Discovery Program, described as "a one day, in-person experience designed to give high-potential second-year undergraduate students" exposure to Amex ahead of internship cycles. The 2026 cycle had a February deadline with confirmations roughly a week later, and eligibility tied to graduating between December 2027 and June 2028. No assessment is described for it.
Amex publishes no sample questions. What follows are original practice items matching the formats Amex describes. They are not Amex questions.
One-way video practice — behavioural.
Record yourself answering in under 2 minutes: Tell us about a time you had to persuade someone to change their mind when you had no authority over them.
Then watch it back with three checks. Did you name the specific situation within the first 20 seconds? Did you describe what you did rather than what the team did? Did you say how it ended? Asynchronous video punishes preamble more than live interviews do, because there is no interviewer to redirect you.
Live interview practice — the 30-minute format.
Amex's US process gives you two 30-minute live interviews. That is short. Practise delivering a complete answer — situation, your actions, outcome — in around 90 seconds, so that a 30-minute slot accommodates six or seven exchanges rather than three.
Case-study practice, for assessment-centre markets.
Amex operates in payments, and assessment-centre cases in the UK and Europe tend to be commercial rather than technical.
A card issuer sees merchant acceptance in a market stall at 62% of eligible merchants while a competitor is at 78%. Card spend is growing but average transaction value is falling.
What are the two or three things you would want to understand first, and what would you propose?
Practise saying your structure out loud before your conclusion. Group discussions reward candidates who make the group's reasoning visible.
Coding practice, for technology routes.
Given a list of transactions each with an account ID, timestamp and amount, identify accounts where three or more transactions occurred within any 60-second window.
Before writing: state your approach, its complexity, and 2 edge cases. The UK apprentice route gives you 7 days for the coding assessment, so there is genuinely time to think — use it rather than rushing on day one.
Group discussion practice.
Two behaviours reliably score well and neither requires dominating: bringing in a participant who has not spoken, and summarising the group's position before time runs out. Practise both.
Candidate accounts of Amex contain several format surprises worth knowing in advance.
On Wall Street Oasis, a candidate reported that their HireVue required "written answers, strangely," with both typed and video response options available. That is not what most people expect from a platform they associate with video, and being surprised by it mid-assessment costs time.
Another WSO candidate described consecutive behavioural stages: "First round was also a HireVue, completely behavioral again" — consistent with Amex's published design of an asynchronous behavioural video followed by live behavioural interviews.
A third reported that the entire technical component of their process amounted to "1 Excel function technical" alongside behavioural questions — a useful corrective for candidates over-preparing technically for a commercial role.
On Glassdoor in April 2026, an Analyst candidate described a data-science-flavoured process: "coding assesement, then interview round for python, sql, pandas, guesstimates, resume based question."
Two further Glassdoor accounts from February and May 2026 describe the experienced-hire shape consistently: "3 rounds, HR screening, managers interview, director interview, mostly on your experience and your competency," and "3 rounds of interview (phone interview with the HR, face to face interview with the line manager and the department head)."
An intern candidate in Madrid in January 2026 confirmed the Spanish video stage in the local language, describing "una presentación en inglés grabada" — a recorded presentation in English.
Glassdoor's aggregate rates the Amex interview experience at 3.8 out of 5 with difficulty at 2.9 out of 5, which places it as moderate rather than punishing.
After the video recording, selected candidates in the US progress to two live 30-minute HireVue interviews. Amex publishes no score or feedback.
After the live interviews, or after the assessment centre in European and Hong Kong markets, outcomes are communicated by the recruiting team. No SLA is published.
For the UK Technology Apprentice route, the coding assessment carries a 7-day completion window, after which successful candidates attend the Virtual Discovery Day.
Amex publishes no policy on candidate use of AI, and no statement about AI-assisted screening. Absence of a published policy is not permission — assume the standard expectation that assessments are your own work, and check your invitation, which is where any specific rules will appear.
Find your country's programme page first. This is the single highest-value 10 minutes of preparation for Amex specifically, because the stages genuinely differ. A Canadian applicant preparing for a video interview, or a US applicant preparing for a group exercise, is preparing for the wrong process.
Prepare for asynchronous and live formats separately. They reward different things. Asynchronous video rewards concision and getting to the point fast, because nobody will prompt you. Live 30-minute interviews reward conversational pacing and leaving room for follow-ups.
Be ready for typed responses. At least one candidate found their HireVue offered written as well as video answers. Know that this is possible so it does not throw you.
Build behavioural depth, not breadth. Amex's published stages are overwhelmingly behavioural and competency-based. Six to eight well-developed stories, each with a specific situation, your actions and a measurable result, will serve you better than surface familiarity with twenty.
For assessment-centre markets, practise group work explicitly. Competency interviews, case studies and group discussions are named together in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Hong Kong. The group component is the one most candidates never rehearse.
For technology routes, confirm what applies to you. US tech applicants take an additional technical assessment; UK apprentices get a coding test with a 7-day window; Singapore PhD candidates get technical, coding and behavioural rounds in a single day.
Do not over-prepare technically for commercial roles. One candidate's entire technical component was a single Excel function.
Yes, and Amex confirms it on its own careers site — US student programmes include "two 30-minute interviews via the HireVue platform." Note these are live scheduled interviews, distinct from the earlier asynchronous video recording, whose platform Amex does not name.
No, and the differences are substantial. The US uses a recorded video plus two live HireVue interviews; Canada uses live interviews only with no video or test; the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Hong Kong use assessment centres with group discussions and case studies.
Amex publishes no numerical, verbal, logical, situational-judgement or personality test for any student programme. Prep sites list them, but Amex itself names none.
Amex states they are two 30-minute interviews for US student programmes. This is one of the few timings Amex publishes directly.
Only for technology roles. Amex states that US candidates applying to tech roles complete an additional technical assessment, and the UK Technology Apprentice route includes an online coding assessment with a 7-day completion window.
The stage following the coding assessment on the UK Technology Apprentice route — two consecutive 30-minute interviews with engineering teams, covering technical and coding ability plus leadership competencies.
Possibly. One candidate on Wall Street Oasis reported their HireVue offered both typed and video response options. Amex does not publish this, so treat it as something to be ready for rather than to expect.
A one-day in-person experience for high-potential second-year undergraduates, positioned ahead of internship cycles. No assessment is described for it, and the 2026 cycle had a February application deadline.
Glassdoor's aggregate scores the interview experience at 3.8 out of 5 and difficulty at 2.9 out of 5 — moderate by the standards of comparable financial-services employers.
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