My virtual internship experience with American Express

Posted on: December 23, 2021

Last Updated on: May 31st, 2022

Post Category: Student Experience

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After spending six months at American Express (AMEX) as an intern in their SME Strategy team, I decided to reflect on my (completely virtual) experience and some of the lessons I got to take away.

In this blog post, I will be recounting some of the highlights from my experience – the experience I had with the team, some of the skills I got to develop and the projects I got involved in. And I’ll be sharing some of the insights I’ve gained while working virtually.

Ultimately, this blog post is for anyone who wants to get a feel for what American Express is like, and students who are curious about working virtually and how to make the most out of a virtual internship.

Highlights from my experience

Overall, the people I have worked with – even those outside of my direct team – have been very supportive about my growth and development. There was an intern committee that helped my intern cohort with onboarding, and, on the whole, the people at AMEX cared deeply about the development of others as much as their own professional development. While I did work virtually, there was a strong sense of community at AMEX – one that values and advances diversity and inclusion, networking, personal growth, etc.

During my internship, I got to take on the following responsibilities and projects:

• Reporting on the performance of AMEX’s contact campaigns and different acquisition channels
• Reporting automation
• Deriving insights from survey responses to drive merchant-engagement strategies for 2022

And what were some of the skills I developed? I gained a lot of experience analysing data, deriving insights from data and storytelling with data, and also built on my technical skills – getting more exposure to Excel, Hive and Tableau.

Some of the things I took away from my internship:

While I took away some insights and learnings from the work I got to do (like how draining auditing can be…), I wanted to share some transferable takeaways when it came to working virtually.

1. Be intentional – with your objective, goals and virtual meetings

From an objective/goals perspective, have a deep think about what you would like to get out of your internship. This can include specific skills, connections and industry knowledge. As an intern, tasks/requests will be thrown your way, so having a few goals in mind can help you pick the ones that you find most valuable for your development.

Moreover, leverage and be very intentional with your meetings. For your professional development, try and set up times with your career coach, leader or buddy to discuss your goals. During my internship, I found having a short catch-up every week about my goals really helped hold myself accountable, and it was a good opportunity for my leader to provide feedback. And for regular day-to-day work meetings, I learnt that quickly writing up an agenda (for my own reference) was helpful in getting through what I needed to cover without wasting time; meetings take a bit of effort to set up in a virtual environment, so it is good to make them worthwhile for all attendees.

Being intentional was indeed something that helped me build my focus while reducing wasted effort and time – and that ultimately helped me get a lot out of the experience.

2. Cultivate/manage your energy and find ways to manage your time

Ironically, even when working from the convenience of your own home, you might sometimes find it difficult to manage your energy… because things just happen! So take the day off whenever you need to, and take a break whenever you need to.

For managing your time, try and set up a system for yourself to manage tasks and deadlines. Think about the apps that your team/organisation uses and see if you can integrate them into a workflow management system. For companies using the MS suite, consider Outlook Calendar to timebox your appointments and tasks, and OneNote to manage meeting, project and task notes. For companies using the Google suite, consider using Google Calendar and perhaps Google Drive. OR you could go with the classic pen and paper – whatever works for you and your style.

Doing these things has helped me get work done without too much stress, however, I did get guilty quite easily after falling a bit sick or taking naps (yes, I took naps during working hours… just like everyone else who has worked virtually). But from a health perspective, I shouldn’t have been, and my team was completely OK with it.

A rather simple takeaway, but nonetheless I hope to develop myself in this area in the future.

3. Take the time to reflect on your experience – to think of opportunities where you could develop further

When setting some sort of objective/goal you want to accomplish during your internship, set aside some time to reflect on them later down the line – so you can think about your progress and the development opportunities you could act on to advance your progress. Perhaps this time could also be an opportunity for you to revise and change your goals.

Taking the time to reflect on my experience and goals definitely helped me be more intentional with my development – by clarifying the next steps I needed to take to further improve.

4. Raise your hand

When a project/task interests you and you have capacity, raise your hand!

It is a simple gesture, but I found it a great way to get more out of the experience. Plus it shows initiative and leaves a good impression to your leaders!

5. Put in time to build those relationships

Working in a virtual environment does present challenges when building relationships – it’s harder to show your personality, have deep conversations, and now you have to send a calendar invite to have a small chat. However, people are MORE accessible in a virtual environment – the person you might want to connect with can be just a direct message away, and you can pretty much connect with whoever you like! Building connections does build your career, so be intentional with who you want to connect with, reach out to those people, and try and connect with as many people as possible during your internship.

To know who you should connect with, it is a good starting point to leverage your leader (or career coach or buddy), talk them through some of your goals and interests, and ask them for some names of people you could connect with. Moreover, at the end of each intro meeting (or informational interview) with these people, think or ask about who you could connect with next based on the conversation.

I’ve had a lot of valuable conversations and gained a broader understanding of the business, using some of the methods above, and I think they’re super transferable to any business. So I hope to keep using them!

To close it off…

Ultimately, my experience at AMEX was a great one where I got to take away so many learnings. The people were super supportive, the work I got to do translated into some business value, and I got a fully-virtual internship experience under my belt!

While working virtually can be a challenge, and a change of rhythm for those who are used to working in the office, having a slight shift in your mindset and working habits can go a long way when it comes to getting the most out of the work experience.

For the students out there, have you had the chance to work virtually? What was it like and what did you learn? I would love to hear about it!