Interview Kickstart

I am with Interview kickstart (IK) for about 5-6 months. I truly believe it has improved my coding and intellectual skills. They give constant support and motivate you. The categorization of entire course helps you to mark a milestone in your study plan. I used to get confused in how to solve coding questions or even start with interview prep. Just solve 1300 Leetcode questions ? How to study?  - IK helps you get through this too. I don't refer to any other study material. There were few concepts which I could never understand and now after finishing the course, I am well confident about it. IK provides a lot of study material and constant coaching as and when needed. Content of the course is not only limited to interview prep but to uplevel your technical, design and other career skills. It covers basic fundamental of DS, Algos and System design too. If you are stuck, there are provide different ways to solve your doubts - via email, coaching sessions, live classes, discussion forums etc which is very convenient. 
My favorite Instructor is Omkar Deshpande. I can relate to his teaching style with my undergrad school teacher. His teaching skills are truly awesome. 
Special thanks to my SSA (Daryl) who constantly motivates me and helps me when I get stuck. He would instantly provide any study material if I want. Staff at IK is very helpful. 
A little advice for future learners : IK will change your career but make sure to give your 100% !! There is a lot to study and prep. We all know how intense are SE interviews. :)

Just wanted to share a quick review of my experience at IK
Before I do that, just to set the context, a quick background about myself. My day job is SW/FW design & development and leading SW teams. I have been doing it for over 20 years now. I have interviewed hundreds of people myself during the course of my career. I have a good understanding of my space (embedded) and I am good at what I do. However, prior to IK, I had very limited exposure to what's going on outside of my domain.

The reason I felt the need to get into a program like IK is because it would allow me to  
1. Get a good understanding of what the rest of the companies outside of my space looks like and trust me, I know a lot more now than I did before I joined IK!  
2. Organize myself to be competitive when I interview for senior development and engineering leadership positions in companies outside my domain.

IK provides a fabulous interview prep framework that anyone motivated enough to put in the time to follow the course set by IK, can and will succeed.

A few noteworthy things that IK brings to the table are

1. IK has great DS and Algorithms content developed by Omkar, who in my opinion is one of the best teachers I have seen till date. Omkar has developed a vast library of content and his focus is mainly on pattern based problem solving. Learning this way allows a student to quickly be able to apply each of the taught patterns to a large cluster of problems. This, needless to say is incredible value in terms of interview prep from a DS/Algorithms standpoint.
2. IK follows the same principle of identifying problem solving patterns for the system design portion of the interview, some of which are also developed by Omkar. The content for the SD aspects of an interview are in depth and if mastered will put anyone in a commanding position during interviews.
3. IK prepares the student for the  behavioral portion of interviews where they drill into the students' minds the do's and don'ts during behavioral interviews. The content developed by IK to handle this portion gives you a very good idea as to what today's companies in the bay area are looking for and how to handle them. It is important to note that each one of these companies have their own way of handling the behavioral section and this part makes the student aware of how the behavioral portion is handled by several large companies. Again, huge value as this is what will determine if one gets the job or not irrespective of how they fare in the technical portions of the interview, hence a very important aspect of interview preparation!
4. IK provides a good support system in terms of technical and behavioral one-on-one coaching for anyone who needs it during the course of their preparation.
5.Finally, students get ample mock interviews in both the technical and the behavioral parts to further solidify and eliminate any interview time weaknesses

In summary, an enrollee at IK, gets access to very high quality content created by some very smart folks from industry leading companies. Again, I want to emphasize, for someone willing to put in the time, there is no reason why (s)he would not be fully prepared to be able to crack interviews no matter how difficult they are.

So yes, everything that you need is packaged for students at IK and with it I think you will be more confident about your abilities in general, irrespective of what you want to do with the all the newly acquired knowledge!

Good luck and go for it!

Having a full-time job and a family it seemed almost impossible to be able to prep for Job interviews and in particular the DSA topic.  Using brute force to prep with leetcode did not seem wise, given the vast areas in this topic. This is when I decided to join IK. The training and coaching provided by Soham, Omkar & Nick is truly exceptional. The insights provided for various algorithms were quite unique and stuck with me. IK breaks down the problems into well known patterns making it easier to solve unseen problems. The coverage on Graphs, Trees and Dynamic programming is probably better than any University course out there. Once I felt fully prepped, I started interviewing and  I was able to bag multiple offers and decided to join a FAANG company. In hindsight was given problems that were not on leetcode. I feel like this was one of the best investments I have ever made. Invest in yourself and take this course.

If you are looking to rediscover your roots as a Software Engineer and grow to the next level in your career,  look no further.

Whether you have spent long years in the industry and lost that sharp edge in problem solving skills due to atrophy in a corporate environment or you are starting out your career now, Interview Kickstart begins from the basics of algorithm design and its application to problem solving. During the course of 8 weeks, you will astonish yourself on how good you have become.

You will work really hard during the course. There will be homework and tests every week. Yes you will fail those tests because they are timed! But it puts you in the interview setting and helps you get and stay comfortable in the problem solving zone. Which is when your brain works optimally.

The classroom instructors are very good and some of their pre-class videos are top notch (taught by Dartsmouth PhDs). I highly recommend Interview Kickstart if you want a structured preparation help in your high end software engineering career goals.

I went through InterviewKickstart a few months ago and found it very helpful despite having started studying on my own beforehand. InterviewKickstart forced me to actually adopt habits I already knew I should have adopted but hadn’t at. The program’s not for you if, when you go to prepare for interviewing, you:

• Successfully set up and follow a multi-month study schedule that sequences topics and has you spending 10–20 hours a week deliberately practicing solving Leetcode-style questions and systems design ones.
• Find friends who interview people at their companies and will give you critical mock interview feedback over and over again as your practice.
• Immediately jump into mercenary mode and start strategizing about your bound-to-be-successful negotiations when you get an offer.

Especially with the popularization of deliberate practice, many of us programmer types know we should prepare for interviews roughly how I described above but, as far as I can tell, very few of us actually do this. I firmly believe that getting people to do things they already know they should do but don’t is truly the “secret sauce” of InterviewKickstart

That said, I’ll briefly summarize the pros & cons of InterviewKickstart.

Pros

• Solid problem sets for most algorithms and system design topics. While the individual questions in the problem sets won’t blow your mind compared to what you might see on Leetcode, the order in which they’re presented and the solutions (and TA help) provided make getting stuck less common and less frustrating.
• There are a few really good teachers who teach at InterviewKickstart. In classes with these teachers, you learn not only content but also how someone who is better than you (or me at least) at thinking would approach a problem.
• The program includes 12 mock interviews and the mock interviewers (at least the ones that I did sessions with) are all solid.
• There’s a person at InterviewKickstart who focuses on behavioral/negotiation stuff and he’s quite helpful if you’re not naturally good at this part of the job process.
• I noticed some other commenters on this Quora post arguing that InterviewKickstart’s “all hype”. From what I can tell, that’s inaccurate in the sense that InterviewKickstart promises it can help people willing to work hard get jobs at big name tech company and does so at a reasonably high success rate. While one could argue that highlights a flaw in hiring processes as much as the value of the program, it doesn’t negate the fact that InterviewKickstart is succeeding at what it promises to do, help people get jobs they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

Cons

• There are a bunch of teachers who are just OK. While the really good teachers treat classes like exploratory learning ventures, the OK ones come off as wanting to show you that they are really good at interview style problems.
• Most people doing the program are, unsurprisingly, focused on finding a job at a big tech name. If you don’t like being in an environment where it feels as though people are openly trying to achieve a traditionally valued goal, then you’ll be frustrated by the one-track-mindedness of most InterviewKickstart students. That said, in my cohort’s case, the one-track-mindedness didn’t devolve into zero-sum competitiveness. People were still helpful to each other and encouraging about others’ job prospects.

To summarize, InterviewKickstart helped me do things I knew I should do but wasn’t doing. I’d definitely recommend it to someone who’s willing to put in 10–20 hours a week preparing for interviews, wouldn’t be able to maintain this level of focus on their own, and wants a job at a “big name” tech company that uses algorithms-style interviews to evaluate candidates.

I took this course in June of 2017 and it was worth every penny. Working in the industry for several years without having to interview, I was in dire need of a refresher since interviewing in the software engineering space is much different than work done on the job. This course was much more than that.

I signed up and was immediately scheduled for a quick 30 minute phone call with the founder, Soham. Why? They don’t just want sign ups for money; they want to make sure your goals are aligned with what the course offers.

After outlining the course and curriculum, I got started. I attended remotely via video. The course was an in depth dive into the key topics necessary for an interview. Trees, Recursion, Dynamic Programming, Graphs, Object Modeling, Scalable Systems, etc - these were each dedicated a full 4 hours each (12 for scalable systems and 8 for dynamic programming) along with homework and timed tests every week. Besides the topics, they also focused on interview problem solving approach - step by step guidance on how to approach each type of problem. Office hours for questions are also very useful.

During the course and after, I had access to several resources to further ensure my success - 15 mock interviews with senior/principal engineers from reputable industry leaders such as Google, Facebook, Apple, LinkedIn, Dropbox, etc. These folks provided feedback after each mock interview which is PRICELESS because this is something you wouldn’t get from a real interview. This allowed me to hone my skills prior to the actual interviews.

Another very important note, and it was shocking to me throughout the process - these folks actually care. Soham and other leaders of the course reached on to me on several occasions to check on my status and provide guidance. Nick spent an hour on the phone during late hours working on techniques to help calm the nerves during interviews and overcome fear.

This course was a life changer - I have since received 4 offers from top companies, Facebook included. Prior to this course (in 2015) when I interviewed with Facebook I didn’t get past the technical phone screen. I passed 12/14 phone screens, and got offers from 4 of the 6 companies I interviewed onsite with.

A couple of things to note:

1. The course is extremely intensive - be prepared to spend 14 hours per week on lectures, tests, and homework
2. This will give you a strong base, but you will need to spend additional hours practicing on your own - I’d recommend 4–8 hours per week
3. Use the course resources! There are office hours, folks from top companies you can reach out to for company specific info, workshops for behavioral interviews, scheduling interviews, negotiating compensation, etc

This is the perfect place if you want to prepare for the coding/technical interviews in the silicon valley.  The standards are pretty high in silicon valley which forces you to have a thorough practice and tailored preparation. The syllabus for this course is well thought and teachers are awesome.

I was looking to switch careers all together from traditional software engineering b2b to machine learning and ai for robotics.  There are a lot of very well known schools and other education bodies offering studies along the lines of applied machine learning & ai. For me what I was looking for really was total value. If I wanted to change careers, what would help me get there effectively.  After some trial and error and looking into courses at mit,   penn,  berkeley, stanford, purdue and quite a few others I didn't feel great about the prospects mainly because there seemed to be no real interest on exactly what may happen to me after I complete the curriculum. Then I met the people from IKS.  The choice to participate seemed immediately obvious for these reasons:

- Curriculum that really builds the practical, every day usable knowledge, from the ground up.
- Mock interviews with  all of the FAANG+ 
- Deep hands on workshops for anything that's not clear, ad hoc
- Workshop after workshop on how best craft your skillsets and web presence in the direction of what the current job market actually needs today. 
- Teaching by way of actual projects not just theoretical. 

Now I am 67% of the way into the course. We've covered everything from applied ml - networks and now onto transformers.  I have a hard time even imagining a way to be more satisfied with a curriculum.

- Educators are extremely qualified & knowledgeable with deeply hands on every day experience. 
- Any issue or situation that has come up, IKS meets with total diligence and respect. 
- All of actions so far meet what they promise.

To me, value of education is always hard to find because there is many times a disconnect between what you learn and what you can use.  This has been one of  the best learning experiences of my career so far and I think if you really want to get involved in practical and applied modern machine learning and aI and you are looking for value,  this is a solid choice. 

Steer clear of this group if you don’t want to commit a significant(25+ hours/week) This program is expensive, its classes are riddled with consistent interruptions from people taking the classes and many times provide unnecessary and distracting feedback. Many times the input from  students is  more of a distraction. Instructors are  good people who  are kind and knowledgeable, but several times the classes got out I’d control with distraction from students. The prerecorded videos are a struggle to get thru. Absolutely profit driven with a customer service team who only cares about protecting the profit of the company rather than doing what is good for people. Sales team is pushy. There are better programs out there that are less expensive and much less stress or hassle. 

I registered to find out more about Interview Kickstart and got a call from one of their sales reps. I told him given my short time line to prep for the interview, what's most important to me is to have a full set of questions and model answers that are typical for the job I'm interviewing for, as well as mock interviews with folks from the company I'm interviewing with. He told me Interview Kickstart could offer me all of that plus recorded versions of the course material, and so I paid for the course. Turns out, Interview Kickstart could not offer me any of the 2 things I asked for. I asked for a refund, and they refused my refund. This is just low-integrity behavior, and essentially a scam.

With over 20 years of experience as an IT Principal Architect, I’ve led enterprise architecture, digital transformation, and large-scale platform modernization across retail, e-commerce, and supply chain domains. I joined IK’s Generative AI program to deepen my expertise in next-gen AI capabilities and stay ahead of evolving industry trends.The program excels in its applied learning approach and is highly aligned with current industry needs. The curriculum covers cutting-edge Generative AI technologies, including LLMs, prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and enterprise-scale deployment strategies. Hands-on projects, case studies, and real-world implementation exercises made the learning highly practical and immediately applicable to enterprise environments.The mentorship and support were top-notch. The mentors provided deep technical insights and guided us through complex architectures, while mock interviews and career-prep sessions sharpened my readiness for leadership roles in AI-driven transformation.Overall, the program has significantly strengthened my ability to leverage Generative AI for enterprise innovation. I now feel well-prepared to design and integrate AI-powered solutions that deliver measurable business value at scale.

As a data scientist without formal education in Generative AI, I joined Interview Kickstart’s Applied GenAI course to build a solid foundation in the field and the experience was outstanding. The course structure was perfectly curated, taking a step-by-step approach from foundational concepts to advanced topics like LLMs and RAGs. The instructors were knowledgeable and experienced, and the Xpert Connect sessions provided valuable opportunities to clarify doubts. Assignments were thoughtfully designed to reinforce learning, and the student support team was always prompt and helpful, making me feel truly supported throughout. What I appreciated most was the strong emphasis on practical applications, which made the learning deeply relevant. Since completing the course, I’ve been able to apply GenAI concepts in my current role and have received recognition for my work. I’m also now actively working on personal GenAI projects with much more confidence. I highly recommend this course to anyone looking to upskill in GenAI. 

My time at Interview kickstart is a fruitful experience in streamlining my preparation focus. While I entered this course my plan for preparation was scattered and IK helped me in bringing it to a concise and controlled  approach. The mock interviews helps a lot in eliminating the overwhelmed feeling of attending interviews after a long break. It was a good decision from my end to join the program and with each passing day I feel more comfortable with myself to handle the interview process!

 Interview Kickstart was a game-changer in my preparation for top tech interviews. The structured curriculum, industry-veteran instructors, and rigorous mock interviews helped me identify and bridge critical skill gaps. The program doesn’t just focus on solving problems — it builds the right mindset, strategies, and confidence needed to succeed in high-stakes technical interviews. The personalized feedback and mentorship I received were instrumental in helping me land multiple interviews at leading tech companies. I highly recommend Interview Kickstart to anyone serious about accelerating their tech career.