Interview Kickstart

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 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

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.

Sigh....where do I begin.

My journey as a software engineer has not been an easy one. After graduatiing from undergrad a long time ago, I realized that if I was ever going to use the math skills I possessed I was going to have to learn how to program. Given there were no boot camps at the time (it was so long ago :P ), I did the next best thing and went back to school, finding a year long masters program for Computer Science. In hindsight, that program, in its infancy at the time, was not as helpful as it should have been. Much of what we learned was old and outdated and the program lacked rigorous instruction in the single most vital component of Software Engineering interviews, data structures and algorithms. As such I didn't feel very prepared when it came time to interviewing.

The job interviewing process for me was a real wake up call and terribly frustrating. I would typically start interviewing, stumbling, struggling, and learning throughout the process until things finally clicked and I was able to land a job. Long story short the process was miserable.

A number of years down the road I found myself in the Bay Area, the tech capital of the world and I knew I would have to better my knowledge of software engienering fundamentals if I wanted to successfully receive offers from top companies. I couldn't keep preparing in the manner I had previously. Hence I found Interview Kickstarter.

I will start with the difference in my interviewing results at the conclusion of the interview kickestarter program. Previously when interviewing, as I mentioned before, I would essentially struggle and fail through interview after interview, until I finally got one right. Before Interview Kick Starter I had never had more than 2 offers at once. At the conclusion of my latest interview saga, I had been invited onsite to 17 different companies, and had received offers from half of them. Its certainly true that I struggled at times, and didn't quite get offers from the goal companies I had in mind. Nevertheless the difference in interveiw results speak for themselves.

The program is extremely rigorous, and while the structure can be too rigid at times, the resources offered to better ones interview skills, whether it be building the core compotency with data structures and algorithms, learning domain knowledge regarding system design, and other soft skills like offer negotation, healthy study habits, and resume building, provided ample opportunity for me to grow in ways I previously thought were not possible.

Long story short, joining interview kickstart was the best thing I've ever done regarding interview preparation for my career. For those who don't have the time to commit, I would caution you against signing up for the program. I was working while I did the program and I spent no less than 20 hours a week doing problem sets. The program is difficult, and will be hard for anyone working full time. The more time you can dedicate to it the better.

Best of luck!

 

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.

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!

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. :)

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.

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.