Interview Kickstart

Interview Kickstart was a good experience for me as I was able to really focus and practice specific skills. I think that although it was helpful for me, a lot of the material available was targeted for people with more experience in the technology industry and as an undergraduate student, I wasn't able to engage with all the material as it was more advanced than what I was looking for. This being said, I like that all this material will be available for me in the future when I need it and that any material I would want ti practice again and relearn is easily accessible. I liked the instructors for the course as they were very clear at explaining. The classes were a bit long and hard to pay attention to every part of the lesson, but having them recorded made it easy for me to view and fast forward parts at any time. I really valued the professional development most out of everything. I was able to fix my resume with several resume reviews, add useful details to my LinkedIn, and get general interview advice that I found to be really helpful. The mock interviews were also very helpful, mostly to practice and clear interview nervousness before a real one. I always appreciated the feedback given after each interview and being able to talk to people who worked at big companies to learn about their experiences. Read less

IK program is a great way to prepare for interviews while working full-time. It provides an efficient schedule, focuses on the important aspects of interviews and adds structure to the preparation. The instructors are experienced and have a knack for teaching. Mock interviews are the most helpful part of the entire curriculum. I found out exactly what I did wrong before interviewing in the real world.  Read less

I joined IK to move to a Tier 1 company. But after joining I felt I was missing a lot with my skills and decided to take the curriculum purely for learning and fun . After completion of program, I definitely feel like up-leveled in terms of my problem solving skills, design skills, soft skills and also from understanding the industry/career trends at large. This reflects on me at my current company and I feel like I would be ready next time to nail a Tier 1 company with some minor refresher of the course work.  Read less

I started with IK in Feb 2021 with master class program. The curriculum is planned very well and covers all the basics of the programming, algorithms and system design. Specially the Omkar’s foundation videos are world class and provide very good foundation before the live class problem solving session. The program is very well planned coding followed by Scalable Systems followed by Career development and interview strategies. Also the technical and career coaching available during support period are a good value add. Overall very satisfied with the program and the learning.  Read less

The best part of the program was the structured approach to brush up the coding topics with a focus on breadth initially. The mock interviews helped a lot in getting honest feedback and practice especially with time constraints. The ad hoc sessions during the support period was great in learning new topics. Read less

I am an Engineering Director today and I was a bit apprehensive initially about the curriculum helping me secure a management position in FAANG. Nevertheless, after listening to Omkar's approach to teaching algorithms, I decided to pursue the course anyway. I really liked the idea of time-boxing the preparation to two months. I should say, I progressively fell in love with the way the coding material was presented. Every topic built upon the previous and it was clear that IK had a winning formula for cracking the coding interview. In some of the topics like graphs, Omkar did such an amazing job of explaining the origin of those problems. In my case, coding was not going to be the primary focus of the managerial interviews. However, having strong intuition about implementation complexity also helped reason well about system design - For example - Web crawler or Web Search or stock exchange system etc. 
For system design, 2 weeks of IK material may not be comprehensive. However, if you can use that as the starting point and explore various system at depth and potentially use their technical coaching sessions to validate concepts that are not clear, it should definitely help you progress. I also read through the DDIA book which I highly recommend to get a good grasp of fundamentals. When I got closer to my final interview, I scheduled a few mock interviews and I got a lot of useful feedback from the interviewers. Overall, I really enjoyed the IK experience and would gladly recommend this as a way to mentally prime yourself for cracking FAANG.   Read less

IK is worth every penny. Their curriculum is structured really well. The classroom learning + weekly tests laid a pretty good technical foundation for me. Furthermore, through their mock tests, I was able to get to valuable feedback (from experienced interviewers) to iron out the chinks in my armour. I could see a noticeable difference in my interviewing skills after undertaking the program, was able to land a job at a top notch tech company. The program can be grueling, but if you do your due diligence, you'll get the results. I can't stress this enough, but the entire IK team will always go the extra mile to solve any issues for you. I always felt that they had my back. Read less

I attended IK and I've got a lot of knowledges and helps enough to get in Microsoft. Their curriculum(algorithms and data structures) is organized very well and explanations are so helpful. And mock interviews and the feedbacks helped me a lot. They add additional classes more and more. It was worth it! Read less

I joined IK in midst of pandemic . While I really would have been benefitted from in person classes , I think It was a one of the best courses I have attended. Lecturers are super professional and love to teach. SOme of the algorithms lectures were eye opening for me as to how lecturers changes the way I thought about a problem. The lecturers are best of the best in their fields. I love how they have resume services and guidance coach as well.  Taking IK course gives a 10000 ft overview of your own career. While I did not get FAANG job, I think I did advance into my career and at a position in fast growing start up.  Read less

IK has been an amazing experience, the course, technical teachers and career coaches certainly put a lot of effort to guide and help. A lot of hard work is required at times to catch up with the curriculum which is in-depth and fast-paced. The faculty is extremely knowledgeable and highly invested in the overall journey and the success of the candidate.

One of the great things is the IK team is very supportive and easily reachable. All I can say IK team leaves no stone unturned to provide the right toolset for success.  Read less

The structured curriculum helps you create a plan, rather than just randomly solving leetcode problems. Good and experienced instructors, very supportive staff. If someone is looking to improve algorithm or interview skills, they should definitely consider using Interview Kickstart and Highly recommend. Read less

• I started IK in April 2021 after a lot of thought and research. After the first introductory call with the founders, I did have sticker shock. But, I went ahead with it after talking to alumni (IK made it easy to do so). Also, it was fairly easy to get my credit card provider to give me a low interest rate to pay for the class over a period of time. 
• After the first lecture, I realized it is up there among the best investments you can make in yourself as a programmer or your career in tech. In fact, thank you to the founders to make it so affordable! Also, I want my money back from all the schools I went to :-) (and I have a PhD in CE from a reputable US University).  
• The head of curriculum (Omkar Deshpande) is the best CS teacher (probably ever). He knows and understands complex topics inside out and is able to share with us his amazing techniques to solve problems and learn patterns. After listening to lectures from him, which are a joy to watch as a learner/student, I guarantee that you will realize what a steal this course is! :-) Omkar's pedigree is up there (Stanford PhD, IIT Delhi topper). Another amazing instructor is Tilo Dickopp who works at Google. I really benefited from his teaching and general interview prep tips. Tilo taught CS for ten years, then worked at small companies, was an IK alum himself before getting into Google! Through the mock interview process, I also interacted with Reza S from Google. All these folks, while being incredibly skilled are humble, helpful and eager to see students succeed. This is a great environment for students/learners.
• There are so many algorithms and techniques in this course that you may have never heard of (at least I had not heard of at least a few). Once you go through the course and give it your best shot, you would be wondering why every programmer is not taught data structures and algorithms this way. The techniques and patterns are useful outside of just interviews and help you become a better programmer. 
• The second component of the course deals with distributed system design. For those outside big tech. or consumer-facing apps, software system scale at the level you see in these places is very rare so you never have to think about what these guys do from a system design perspective. This was a revelation to me (I work in a small company). Again, Omkar starts things off before instructors like Vivek Hariharan (LinkedIn) take it to the next level. They also provide a great template to deal with these interviews in general and prepare for them. Finally, they make you think about how this ties into the algorithms part of the course, and how to prep for company-specific interviews.
• The third component of the course deals with behavioral preparation as well as overall job search/career growth/interview strategy/negotiation strategy. This component is headed by Nick Camilleri, who is the absolute boss in this space. I listened to every word of his as it was super valuable. 
• In addition to the instructors, IK has thought through additional support for students in the form student support advocates (SSA). My SSA (Daryl) became a good friend who I could talk to and get honest feedback on about where I am and how things are going. He also made available content from alternate instructors I needed whenever I asked for it and made valuable suggestions on improving my process. IK was more fun to go through with Daryl.
• I also made good friends with students/learners in my cohort and shared stories, experiences, and hopes :-) the community as a whole is very supportive.
• Finally, IK makes all the content available to you for life. You can keep improving on yourself and really never stop learning.

In summary, if you want to improve yourself as a programmer, this is really the best CS education you can get for a fraction of the cost you will pay at any decent University. This education will reflect in your interviews as well as your job. I highly recommend IK to anyone considering it. Read less

I highly recommend this course to whoever wants to up level career in software world. It is not just about finding a new job with more compensation but even with if you want to stay with your current employer and improve your skill, this is a right choice. 

Course is well structured which includes data structure, algorithms, system design and behavioral. Instructors and supports staffs are excellent.  Read less

Overall the course was great. It helped me shape my thought process on not just data structures and system design but also on behavioral topics. The course was shaped to cover topics on very niche topics but the content that was gradually added helped  with the software engineering interview process. Specifically Omkar's foundational and adhoc floaters which helped develop intuition and template around the problems. A suggestion to future learners would be to utilize the resources that are provided at IK and complete the review material including test as much as possible. Daryl, my SSA, was super helpful from the start and was courteous throughout the period. Any queries related to the course material or scheduling of mocks were properly addressed and answered Read less

There's no a single thing that fits everyone's needs out there. IK had helped me with not just improving my technical knowledge but also gain confidence to attend the likes of Google and Facebook. There is the technical side of IK that is very well structured for everyone to gain knowledge while solving problems and learning about the nuance details about how to think Programatically. Beyond the technical knowledge, IK helped me with prioritizing my interviews, guided me with interviewing not-dream companies to the dream-companies and finally with negotiations too.
I appreciate IK and most importantly all the folk part of it. You sure helped someone plan their future well. Your help is what made me achieve what I can only dream about, people tend to not accept it but I think it a collective #win. Thank you! lot more to do from here. 

Aim high! Read less

IK has four strong pillars. Foundations videos go broad and deep. They teach concepts. Live sessions reinforce the concepts with concrete examples. Tests (practice and timed), they provide the practice required to perform in interviews. The most important of all is getting the feedback on your journey. That is mock interviews. The recipe to make oneself successful in next career move is packed into this course. Of course practice and following through curriculum is the key. The support personnel are just amazing. They are at your fingertips to help you out. One improvement, I would like to see the session length for live sessions always goes beyond the meeting time. Not by little, but by at least an hour in best case. Never finished within timed slot. Read less

Helped me land a job at a FAANG company. The Instructors and course material are excellent.
I did not use any other prep including Leet Code, as the Interview Kickstart course is complete.
Spend 2-3 months of dedicated time on the course and you will see big changes in your career. Read less

I joined Interview Kickstart in June 2019. In 2018, I decided I wanted to find better opportunities so I started leetcoding. After solving 50-60 problems, I realized I am not getting any better and merely solving problems in an unstructured way which was not helping. I lost the rhythm and stopped preparing. I work full time and I am a mother of a toddler; so I was looking for some guidance who will help me with this entire journey.

I joined Interview Kickstart out of desperation and I decided atleast spending so much money will keep me motivated to keep preparing. I have to say the entire journey was very fulfilling. I would solve homework problems every evening from 8:30-11pm. After finishing the class, I started giving Mock Interviews. I think the most benefit out of everything was Mock Interviews and  1-2 awesome teachers. After 7-8 mock interviews (coding, system design and behavioral) I was confident in solving problems on board and was comfortable to approach a problem. Mind you, I did fail a lot of practice phone interviews in the beginning; so the journey was not picture perfect.  It started getting better and I cleared 5 phones interviews. Out of those, I went onsite to 3 companies and got 2 job offers. 

Cons:
1) Along with Interview Kickstart, I still solved a lot of problems from Leetcode.
2) I also referenced other sources for system design/OOP design. The instructors are not that great and I believe 1/2 sessions are not enough.

You definitely don't need to join IK, but if you are someone like me who has tried and failed doing that or you need some extra guidance/structured format; than this will be helpful.

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