Interview Kickstart

Interview Kickstart is the place to sign up for comprehensive and fun interview preparation. They have modules for general SWE roles covering in-depth DS/Algos/System Design, Career Coaching/Resume building and specific tracks for Engineering Managers, AI/ML, IOS Engineering, Embedded Systems and many others. The instructors are amongst the best from the industry with a passion for coaching and the course includes Classes, Homework question review sessions, Timed Tests, and Technical coaching sessions and most importantly Mock Interviews. There is no dearth of high-quality, well structured material that is very pertinent to interview prep. In addition the IK Program Advisors & IK Operations team are top notch.

Soham, who founded IK with Ryan, have inspired many engineers to get better. I have gone back to IK twice in the past 7 years to gain valuable skills. 5-Star experience. Read less

Interview Kickstart Operations really helped me to deal with the unexpected situations when i started off my course. I am thankful to them in helping me out and being flexible with things. Their curriculum is pretty much organized and the instructors are very knowledgeable and are willing to support you throughout the journey. Read less

The quality of sessions, mock interviews feed back, classes and post class support is really good. It really helped me improve my data structures and algorithms skills and helped develop the confidence to take difficult interviews. Even if you are not interviewing the program itself helps you improve your teachnical and interviewing skills. I would highly recommend IK for anyone who is seriously considering  to take big tech interviews Read less

If you are someone who thrives on deadlines and a structured curriculum and also looking for great instructors and amazing support staff then this is the place for you. It’s been more than a month since I started this bootcamp program and so far my experience has been nothing but amazing. I would highly recommend this bootcamp if you are planning to climb up the corporate ladder. Read less

I would like to say that IK is the best academy out there.  Before joining IK I was so directionless, did not know how to start and what content to cover for interviews.  IK helped me to shape me out and provide a clear pathway to attend and win interviews.  I would say the price is really worth for the content Ik provides.  The instructors are very knowledgable and helpful.  The operations team is very active and highly supportive to help and fix in all possible issues.  Also, I am happy to announce that I landed a very good job offer as a result of joining IK in this competitive market.  I shall be still continuing with IK to keep my knowledge updated and be on track for my dream company. Read less

Preparing for software interviews (tech) lot of work sprcifically FAANG and Tier I companies are entirely a different league. You need the right techniques to crack these big companies interviews. With time, interview process getting harder and more challenging. For working professionals this get 10X harder due to full time job and not much time to prepare for these intervies. 
I have gone through the process personally and can already see the shift in my coding skills and system design skills. They have some of really good instructors for hard topics like TREES , GRAPHS and DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING problems. Once you go throgh the class and grasp the technique of solving these topics problems, you will be enjoying solving these problems.
However, You have to put the effort from your side to learn and work but IK will make the journey easy for you! Its a lot of work but knowing that you will eventual get to a place where you can ENJOY solving technical problems makes it all worthwhile. 

Best parts:
Great learning material (truly world class curated over years).
1-on-1 coaching upon request(Once you see an expert solve a problem - things just seem to flow and make sense)
Practice tests and class problems ).
mock interviews (extremely useful in finding the blind spots in thinking and approach)
Support Period 


You will become better Engineer after joining IK. My honest recommendation go for IK - if you want to become a better engineer not just crack a FAANG+ interview. Read less

I joined the interview kickstart in the Summer of 2021. Since then I have been blown away by the quality of content, I'm sure you have read that in other sources and the support that comes with it. The support is available almost 24/7/365 for your questions, scheduling help, and alternative coursework whenever and however needed. There's also a community of current and former students at every professional level in every domain of software engineering and related niche (ML, DS) who are friendly, understand your journey and challenges and help along the way as much as possible. After the live classes end the course is self-directed mainly but there are a lot of pre-made schedules available to copy, paste or adapt to your own personal situation and pace. Overall, I highly recommend interview kickstart if you feel un-directed, are anxious to try the interviews on your own, and can benefit from the experience, good structure, and mentorship, yes there may be a lot of free courses out there but if you are someone who can benefit from a structure that promotes accountability, discipline this will be worth looking into for you. The support and negotiation team goes above and beyond to accommodate urgent negotiation, offer deadlines, and mock interview request with select individuals based on the company you may be interviewing for. Soon after I joined, a friend of mine also joined and we are both very happy with the results and most importantly the growth and network of professionals we walked away with.  Read less

I joined Interview Kickstart for the structure and material it provides, but ended up learning and gaining a lot more in return. The curriculum and material is structured to help with understanding the concepts in detailed manner such that it builds the thought process of how to approach each type of problems.
The foundation videos helps in building the concepts and thought process by providing detailed explanations.
The live classes and instructors are great and the alternate live classes are also provided to cover variety of topics/problems/patterns.
The time throughout the course and support period as well as beyond support period gives great networking opportunities to connect with alumni as well as to form study groups that helps a lot.
There is no limit on the material or help we can seek during the course and support period, be it in terms of videos/recordings/live classes, extra topic help, career coaching, technical coaching, code review, System Design mini mocks, etc.
Also, all the material provided during the course and support period has life time access.
The Mock Interview provided are also a great asset in practicing the interviews.
This is not just a course but a community of learners and scope to learn is immense if we can leverage the support provided. Read less

- Being a full time employee and preparing for the interviews can be very daunting, especially if you have not done the technical interviews for long time. the course keeps you on track with the interview prep and keeps you motivated.
- Given so much information is available online, it is very easy to get distracted and hop form one prep material to the other and spending too much time doing it.
- It gives a very focused study sessions, live classes and tests.
- I found the career coaching and technical coaching sessions to be very useful and insightful.
- The mock interview session help you prepare for what to expect in a real interview and deal with the anxiety that you face when you are just starting with real interview process.
- The curriculum is great and instructors are amazing, they are very smart and kind. Read less

I wholeheartedly recommend Interview Kickstart. Their program is extremely well thought out. They clearly have put great care into the pacing and content of this course. The instructors are consistently amazing, both in terms of skill in their respective areas of expertise, as well as teaching abilities. The program rounds things out with an incredibly well run Operations team that is friendly, knowledgable, and quick to respond to any question or request for assistance. 

I took the iOS Engineer specialization track. It was a relatively new program for the company, and was understandably less polished than their core data structures and algorithms material, but nonetheless it was very well done. The instructors were amazing developers and teachers. They covered just the right level of depth and breadth of material, and it was all directly relevant to interviews I have since done in the real world.

I had done a lot of prep studying data structures and algorithms (about 3 years of 5-10 hours per week while working as a full time iOS dev) prior to starting with Interview Kickstart (aka IK), but I had failed to pass phone screens up to that point. IK provided me with the structure, pacing, motivation, and support I needed to finally get over the hump. I received an offer for iOS developer recently at a company that I am very excited to join.

IK helped me get to this point, which I'm both excited about and grateful for. But I'm also excited that I get to be part of the IK community going forward. There is a large and ever growing group of IK alumni, and based on what I've seen so far, it seems that IK does a very good job of leveraging that community to benefit its members. IK graduates are at every big tech company, many of whom are hiring managers themselves now. IK is a powerful source of connections for referrals and knowledge sharing. The community is hardly the only ongoing benefit - I also get lifetime access to the course content, which I use almost every day to continue my learning. I also routinely get invites to new lectures and classes that are being added to the program. I don't remember hearing about this perk while I was considering joining IK, but it's another delightful little detail that makes me love IK.

Finally, perhaps the biggest thing that originally sold me on IK was its promise that in addition to the course helping you become capable of passing interviews at top tier tech companies, the program would make you a significantly better developer in your day to day job. I feel that IK delivered on this last promise in spades. I became a lot better at my current iOS dev job as a side benefit to this course.

It is important to note that a key component of the promise of improvement and success that IK makes to its students is a good faith effort on the part of the student. This good faith effort amounts to *a lot* of work. I felt that IK did a great of job setting my expectations appropriately prior to my starting the class. They made it clear that if I didn't put in the effort, I would not be successful. IK is not a place to go to magically get good at passing technical interviews. You have to earn it. There will probably be times that you feel overwhelmed and afraid that you might fail. This is normal, expected, part of the journey, and navigating this difficulty is baked into the program. There is always someone available to help you get unstuck, back on track, and encourage you to stick with it. I tried this journey on my own for years without success. It took me 8 months of hard work with IK to get there. It probably would have taken me another 3 years on my own. During those additional 2+ years of waiting, I would have been leaving tens of thousands of dollars per year on the table. Read less

I've been taking the backend engineering course in Interview Kickstart for about two months.

So far I enjoyed the experience a lot. I believe what I learned from classes and study materials can really help me to solve actual coding challenges since the course is focusing more on helping its student building up the mindset for solving a problem, including how to analysis the question, clarify the problem, transform or break-down it into simpler problems and apply what we learned for solve those basic problem.

The Student Success Advocate(SSA) is highly engaged to me, and even call me on the phone when I missed one of the live class.


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IK provided me with the necessary knowledge and tools for cracking the interviews for Tier 1 companies. Uplevel platform proved to be really useful while preparing for the online and in person rounds. Apart from DSA questions, IK provides so many other resources like one on one, mock interviews, technical discussions, support period. I personally enjoyed System Design lectures which provided an edge to my knowledge. I feel more confident after taking course. It really is a great platform. Kudos to IK team.  Read less

I am enrolled in the ML Track and know a few others who enrolled in other tracks( Backend, Frontend ). The program is very well structured, with a focus on building a strong foundation in coding/system design( ML + non ML) /ML domain, and is taught by instructors who are extremely knowledgeable. 
Most of the instructors are from FAANG companies and are very open to guiding the students during or even outside the sessions. Help is also available through mini mocks, career coaching,  technical coaching , and behavioral coaching  1:1 sessions which in my view is one of the best parts of the package. 
The product managers regularly seek feedback from the current and past cohorts which shows the IK teams' focus on improving an already excellent program.  A Student success advisor is assigned to each student who is always available to help with planning the preparation and ensure that the students have access to all the resources to be successful. 
There is a support team that works around the clock and is super responsive. All of the above and more make IK one of the best programs for tech interview prep currently available and I am very happy with the results so far.

I wholeheartedly recommend this program to anyone who wants to do well in tech interviews.  Read less

I wanted to sincerely thank the Interview Kickstart team for their fabulous support provided to me in my preparation of AWS SDM interview. I cleared the interviews in first attempt after going through the training. The mock interviews were very helpful. Interview Kickstart has well structured interview preparation strategy and it is very powerful. Thank you IK team for a wonderful training program…😊 Read less

I used IK to help me move into an Embedded Software develpoment role from a Validation role. 
The DSA curriculum by Omkar was a great learning experience, although I did not enjoy the weekly sessions by a few others. The curriculum itself was very extensive for me. The Embedded curriculam was great too although it needed some restructuring and better weekly instructors. Raghu, the head instructor and Glen were great! Overall, IK was an excellent platform for a disciplined and structured interview prep. Needless to say, one has to put in their efforts to benefit from this program. 

IK's mock interview sessions were extremely helpful in reducing my overall anxiety and nervousness. The interviewers provided great feedback and were very accomodating. I was also able to meet up with many people from my field through their Discord server.  Read less

"The best is yet to come" I believe in it, and Interview Kickstart makes your dreams true. This program allowed me to learn and practice the skills needed to land a job in Data Engineering.
The roller coaster journey I experienced with Interview Kickstart is worth it. Although the intense weekend classes and homework material demand you to utilize mock interviews, it not just removes the fear of interviews and accelerates learning and brainstorming. Read less

IK is great for up-leveling your skills. One instructor which stood out for me was Omkar Deshpande. I have never had an instructor who is so clear in his thought process. His style of teaching really helped in understand all the Data Structure and Algorithms topics. Earlier I had never studied about DP & graphs but after watching Omkar's videos I was not able to understand the concept but was also able to solve many LC problems. Another great advantage is the study group formed in this course. Very helpful and really motivating. Read less

I came to know a lot from Interview Kickstart bootcamp. Its rigorous and very informative. The course has a lot to offer. Definitely helpful material for job search . The instructors are knowledgable and if one has no clue where to start then , they should definitely join IK  Read less

I have attended the Interview kickstart SRE course and its waste of money. They have some pre-recorded videos/materials for specific topics which are some what good for Coding and System design. Remaining all materials are not useful at all. Mainly, they don't care about you once your payment is done. And, there is no way to get back your money if you are unsatisfied. Its all business with them. The cost of the course is 6400$.  Read less