Interview Kickstart

As someone looking to transition my SWE career into FAANG+, I looked for a structured program to help me attain my goals. With 2 months of arduous preparation and help through the interview kickstart program, I have now joined a FAANG company. From a strong technical program to mock interviews and career coaching, IK provided a holistic preparation approach. On top of this, my student success advocate Gayatri was also very helpful in helping me navigate the program. I recommend interview kickstart for anyone looking to make a transition to product based companies. Read less

Starts really well with the DSA foundation, and Omkars passion and natural ability makes all the DSA problems related videos a must watch. System Design is also structured well, although more scenarios could be covered in depth. Career Coaching really helped me nail my behavioral answers down. I personally felt I could have used the mock interviews better. They could enforce you to use part of you mock interviews by a certain date so that you have a better understanding of the importance of mocks (currently you are free to use the mock interviews as you want, and a lot of us tend to procrastinate) Read less

I'm one of those people who was initially apprehensive to join IK but then decided to give it a shot and joined early this year.    To give you a context, I have a degree in Electrical  Engineering and had never solved a single Leetcode problem before I joined IK. It had always felt extremely overwhelming to solve DSA problems even though I've been writing firmware in C for over a decade. But, constant practice was what helped me. In 4 months, I solved 425 LC problems, thanks to Omkar's amazing explanations in all his foundation videos, live classes and floater series. He covers each topic in depth in his videos and this is very helpful for people like me who come from a background that is not Computer Science.   I chose the Embedded Systems master class since that was my domain and I came across an absolutely amazing study group there. That group of driven and passionate individuals from various IK cohorts kept me accountable on my prep and helped one another as needed and I would definitely say that group was my blessing. The mock interviews helped me a lot in identifying the areas I need to focus more on. The detailed feedback from mock interviewers and suggestions on resources were very helpful.   I started interviewing in mid April and started with tier 2 companies. I interviewed with 4 of them - 2 startups and 2 established companies : Skytran, Inari Medical, Masimo and Marvell Semiconductors. I got offers from all the 4. With this warm up, I started applying to my target FAANG companies. I also applied to a couple AV companies - Cruise and Rivian. As of today, I have offers from Google, Apple, Amazon, Cruise and Rivian. So, I was able to crack all the interviews I had given and got offers from all 9 companies I interviewed with (I got 2 offers from Apple since I interviewed with 2 different teams.) I also cleared the phone screen for Meta and then the hiring freeze happened. In total, I had given almost 75-80 rounds of interviews with all these companies combined and I cracked all of them.   None of this would have been possible without IK. I was someone who tried clearing Amazon's phone screen twice in the past few years and failed both the times. However, this time, I cracked 3 big FAANG companies with ease. I will definitely attribute this 100% success rate to IK. This program is no magic. They don't give you cheat sheets or shortcuts to crack interviews. They show you the path and provide you with the resources. If you can make the maximum use of those resources and put in your sincere efforts, then you are sure to achieve your goals.  Read less

This was course extremely helpful, it taught me how to look at technical interview questions and break down the question to be able to answer them. So much more helpful than my school's mandatory algorithm course. It made me feel more confident answering technical interview questions with little prep beforehand. Read less

This is one of the Most Comprehensive Interview Preparation Course. 
All instructors are highly experienced and have passion for teaching. Omkar Deshpande especially stood out for me, his passion for teaching DSA is infectious.  
We would still need to put in lot of hard work on our own but IK provided the structure for the prep and well curated material with logical sequencing. Community build around IK (especially on discord) helps you keep going during the support period.  Read less

Omkar Deshpande is the sole reason I was able to articulate complex problems after this training, he is the chief instructor of almost all the courses. A series of formulas or methodology has been derived for every complex set of DSA questions especially Exponential Problems, Trees, and Graphs. System Design material alone is around 20 hrs and has helped me to date. Cost-wise it's quite a pricey option but the upside is, that these concepts won't change for life and I considered as a good investment for future engineering interviews to come as we get lifetime access. Read less

If you are a experience engineer, with experience working on data structures and you are finding it challenging to clear technical interviews, this course is perfect for you. The course material is well organized and high quality, the kind you would see is a DS course in top graduate schools, the Instructors are just the best people on this earth who are passionate and genuinely interested to see you crack interviews. Instructors are experts in the field yet so down to earth and humble. Read less

The best apart about IK is that they aren't necessarily teaching you how to crack interviews through short cuts. The entire curriculum is setup in a way to improve your engineering skills as well as problem solving skills. It's more like teaching you how to think through algorithm based problems than just solving Leetcode questions together. You'll still need to grind to land your dream job/position, but IK's support through their curriculum, instructors and coaching is absolutely worth the money you'll pay.  Read less

IK was a real eye opener or me in understanding how to approach the technical interviews in Tier I product companies. The key differentiator for IK and what I liked is that they cover all aspects from interview process right from resume preparation / review >  how to search for jobs > LinkedIn profile > technical (Data Structures & algo) > system design > soft skills > technical assistance sessions > mock interviews > offer negotiation et all. 

From my personal experience of attending this course and as a person who had got good offer from Tier-I tech companies, this course is a definite YES to anyone who is serious about their job hunt and uplevel their career.

Thanks IK and good luck to all current & future learners. Read less

As an alumni of Interview Kickstart, here is my complete review. I have gone through it and got offers from couple of FAANG companies.

You should take this course only if you satisfy all of the below points:
1. If you have enough time to spend (10-15 hours per week is bare minimum). Hard work pays off in long run. You might be smarter, but you need to spend enough amount of time to see the day light. Some made it in couple of months but for me it took almost a year.
2. Don't believe that by just attending classes during the course, you will magically crack interviews
3. If you can motivate yourself time and time again when things (life, current job, interviews at some companies) won't work your way
4. Believe in doing the things the right way, there are many shortcuts out there to memorize and reproduce in interviews. (sometimes they may work and sometimes they don't)
5. (For software engineers) If you know how to code in at least one language. 

Why you should take this course:
1.  Probably it is well tested and the focus is more on the concepts / templates rather than approaching one problem at a time.
2. You will meet peers who have similar aspirations. You can make groups and help yourselves.
3. Instructors are always there to help if you have questions or if you want to present your way of solving problem.
4. Probably the best investment of time and money in the long run for wanna be techies/geeks.

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I was looking to jump companies and bump up my salary in that process, but realized I needed more practice with data structures and algorithms. The curriculum at IK is pretty comprehensive and does require a good amount of time/dedication to complete. Due to COVID, the classes were held online and each week the class required you to complete the pre-req material for that topic. That was fine, but the online class would go for 6-8 hrs at a stretch on Saturday morning/afternoons depending on your timezone. I was not a fan of sitting for that many hrs in one go. Would prefer if the schedule was broken down multiple sessions/days in a week. 
Out of all the instructors, I found Omkar the most easy to follow and enjoyed his systematic teaching method. 

Overall, I would recommend IK for people who are serious about moving to a FAANG company as a software engineer as the curriculum covered here goes into all topics (arrays, trees, maps, graphs, sorting, recursion, etc) in good depth. Read less

IK presents with a curated set of fundamental DS&A principles and coding practices which I think are great for someone who’s new to big tech interviews. Personally, I’ve been through the LC style interviews once before but found the approach, timelines and schedule of the coursework highly useful to keep me on track with my progress in a quarter long preparation sprint. Read less

The course provides everything one needs to understand to be able to crack the interviews for FAANG companies. They do their best to make the vast portion as concise as possible and the root of this course is not to find a loop hole in the hirings process but to just make you a better engineer who can solve coding questions in limited time and give the acceptable answers for behavioral interviews. The materials and live sessions are amazing and can be overwhelming at times but if you manage to stick with it for even 50% of the time, you would have improved a whole lot. If you don't have the drive to practice coding everyday then this bootcamp is for you as you will pay a whole lot and have a schedule to adhere to from day one when you join this bootcamp. Read less

I would recommend this course to anyone who would like to prepare for the software engineer interview for FAANG and many other companies in SF Bay Area.
Interview Kickstart has a great curated curriculum that is up to date with the interview process with many companies.
But the best part of the course is not even the content rather then support and access to the coaches you get. You could get guidance for the problems you stuck and advice on many system design topics.
Unfortunately not all the coaches are great but over time you'll learn the schedule and know when to book the session to get the most of it.
For me one of the most helpful parts were the behavior and the offer negotiation sessions. Behavior knowledge and practice was so useful for me so I sometimes passing even coding exercises leveraging soft skills even though not completing technical solution or not providing the optimal one.
Offer negotiation knowledge gained is hard to underestimate as it allows me to create the lever to get the most from my effort.

I hope that Interview Kickstart will improve the operational part. It is quite frustrating you showed up to the mock interview or live class and it is rescheduled after 5 minutes of beginning. The performance of the platform for submitting solutions and over all reliability of the uplevel portal also could be improved.

The course does require commitment and hard work. You have to be dedicated in order to succeed in it and get the most of it. On the other hand the program is designed to motivate you (career instructors put lots of effort in it) for the career shift and with the skills you will gain you just can't agree to less. You will not accept offers with the boring job anymore. Read less

The program really helped me to gain in depth understanding of core concepts and fundamentals of Data Structures and Algorithms. Course is well structured to take one from beginner to advance level. After taking the course, I was able to solve algorithm problems with more efficiency. Mock interviews helped in identifying my weak areas and IK instructors did a commendable job in providing in-depth explanations of different kind of patterns used to solve problems. Read less

Pros: IK is super helpful in cementing a lot of the basics and developing a deeper understanding of the core concepts that are essential to the interview process at any FAANG company. The foundation material is dense, but it is discussed at a swift pace. Omkar's instructional videos are very detailed and break down the essentials into small digestible components, his method of teaching seems academic, yet-tranquil,. The mock interview sessions are super helpful, especially for those who need additional guidance and help with defining their shortcomings. The coaches (current FAANG employees) may bring in their own experience interviewing with FAANG and the mistakes that they wished they could avoid if they could do it all again. The IK staff are very friendly and receptive. They are quick to respond and "go the extra mile."

Cons:  The foundational material + classes + problem-sets can seem overwhelming if you are already working full-time, but any missed material can be reviewed during the support period so they are very accommodating about this. Read less

I want to really understand the concepts and patterns that would help me solve any question. IK's instructor did a superb job of providing in-depth explanations of the patterns and thought process that you should use to arrive at the correct solution, no matter the algorithm or design problem.  Highly recommended! Read less

2 years back I gave a atleast 10 onsites which had system design and literally bombed every design interview so I was looking for a course that taught me how to learn architecture and system design. I had searched everywhere and read a few books on it but never understood how to answer design questions. I was lucky to have found IK because they teach system design from the absolute basics, they have some really great teachers and what I really love in their curriculum is the daily office hours//support. I would recommend anyone who i s willing to understand the basics and prepare for system design rounds to give IK a try and am sure they woon't regret it. Infact when I joined I get a feeling that why isn't colleges teaching this stuff to their students when this type of knowledge is to important.  Read less