Interview Kickstart

Since it has been a year since I wrote this I decided to go back to IK and see how things have changed. If you don't have time here's a broad overview on what's changed:

- IK has a brand new prep website
Interview question interface is cleaner and more efficient
- Video content has been refreshed and is better organized inline with interview practice questions
- IK has a strong career coaching program (IMO this is their best value prop)
- Coaching focuses on creating a tailored strategy for your job search
- conclusion: IK has improved program and is good solution for those seeking an interview prep framework and especially career search coaching

For a more in-depth review I've updated my original blog post. Pop on over and check it out: https://justinrich.medium.com/my-experience-with-interview-kickstart-e3b5edc3bd55

I would share the conclusion first and it is NOT recommend to join any this kind of courses. This also including other on site interview companies (Usually charge their students USD$4,000 ~ 15,000).

I have attended to one of their course/product. I have the following reasons that I DO NOT recommend:

1. Courses are all over charged. Paying $6,000 for watching some guys telling me Leetcode solution on white board or videos is too much. There are couple online interview courses did a much much better job. They explained much better! For e.g. neetcode.io. Youtube also has lot of good people teaching all the skills for interviews

2. Videos are not viewers friendly. For e.g., one class is like 4 hours as I rmb and it only covers 4 questions. One class is basically one topic like DP, Graph.

3. Some lecturers are ok but some are terrible. For e.g., some of them did not explain the questions properly and some of them have bad english which no one can understand easily.

4. Sales are very pushy and so many excuses so DO NOT leave your phone no. You would receive calls and push you to pay. Also, do not believe in their ads like giving scholarship. At the end, you still need to pay thousands bucks for nothing.

5. Last but not least, many materials and online free and paid courses which provide interviewees better ideas how to prepare. They won't charge you crazy so you can enjoy the learning process without bankruptcy.


I am sorry to my family that I lost thousands dollars on this so I would like to speak out so no more people would suffer. IMO, save you money and find the better one like neetcode.io and Udemy. Neetcode did help me a lot and he only charged me $120.

This review is about one of their $12,000 course.

All the sunday classes are going over 6+ hours and rushing it complete. Some of the concepts covered are difficult to digest and definitely needs more time, when we brought that with support, we got response that "We are working on it" that's it. Not covering all the basic concepts to understand the topic well. They just cover what is needed at bare minimum. 140+ slides to be covered in 4 hrs with over 95 students makes it wague and boring.

The ability to explain to someone with no knowledge on the subject is an art. BEING a teacher and WORKING as a teacher are two extremely different aspects. Pretty sure most of the instructors are PHD's earning half a million/year. But the same concepts I can understand effectively from my favourite teacher in youtube videos.

This course is supposedly designed for people with no experience but it is not true, cheap marketing! Why would they put 95+ students in the class. Very difficult to follow and wasted my money. Quantity over quality.

I will never recommand anyone. They are lier, they told me after finish the course if I don't get job at tier 1 companies they will refund my money but they did not. All the course metarials are freely available online so why should you pay $6000. scam scam scam this is true scam. I spend $6000 for some recorded video which I already knew. this full course should not cost more than $10. they teach only data structure and algorithms which you can buy from udemy or pluralsight for $10-$20 or from youtube For free.

The sales reps will not stop calling me. I signed up for a webinar just to get an idea of the pricing - sadly, they now have my phone number and this means that they call me all day every day from different phone numbers.

I was hoping it might be something that I save up for the next time I want to prepare for a technical interview (currently not something I'm doing), but after being hounded by the sales reps multiple times a day over the past week, I have no interest in ever using this company.

Sales rep is super pushy and I told him my situation of not being able to currently commit to the time needed for this program and will reconsider in the future. And he said "got it" then hung up. WTF!

I am an IK student, and enrolling in IK was a mistake. It is essentially just an interview prep service. The salespeople make exaggerated and false promises about helping you land an interview. If you are looking for something that can genuinely assist you in securing interviews, I would not recommend enrolling in this program.

Not worth the money. Poor Instructional Design. You're far better off searching for System Design and doing Leetcode Exercises. Many free resources on YouTube provide more value.

IK as an idea is great. Its all about their sales pitch and how they get you in but after that the quality is poor.

Content:
The content that they have is amazing and they are actually sitting on a gold mine with their content that is created by Omkar. It is their content only which is valuable and if that content could be delivered effectively, IK will be worth every penny.

Instructors:
Only handful (1-2) of the live instructors are good and rest are not even worth attending the class.

They sell you that you are taught by FAANG engineers - if you are working at FAANG company it does not mean you are a good teacher.

Student Advisor:
Student advisor is a joke as SA does nothing and is mostly not available as they are mostly not in US time zone. Even after providing feedback multiple times, there is no action taken or support provided by the SA and you end up wasting your time.

1-1 coaching:
It is helpful to clear your doubts and is abundantly available. I am thankful IK has this support.

Live Classes
Most of the classes are waste of time as the quality of the instructors is not worth attending the class.

On top of it, since the classes are virtual, IK stuffs their classes with 100+ students. If every student ask only 1 question and it takes 2 mins to answer the question, 200 mins: 3+ hrs would just go answering the questions in a 6 hr class. I don't mind the questions as you learn from others but most of those questions are because many students come to class without going through course material in advance. There is no moderation by IK for this resulting in wasting time for students who actually do their part and come prepared.

Cost:
IK is pretty expensive with close to ~6K for their masterclass program.

My 2 cents:
Ik advertises that they have live classes that differentiates them from others.

The truth is they pack hundreds of students in their classes and its not like they will have only a cohort attending a live class.

It is all about their sales pitch and how they will advertise and put pressure by suggesting only 1 or 2 seats are left, its all full etc.

Avoid them and go through leet code + Abdul Bari videos on youtube and you will be set for the interviews - Only if their instructors would be great and they moderate or club group of people who are at same level I would not be making the above statement and the review would be 5 stars.

Soham if you are reading this, improve the quality of your instructors as that is what will make IK worth every penny. It is not about money as time is most precious commodity and the quality of instructors determines the value of spending 6+ hrs every live class and in most cases instructors are not even sub-par - And if you don't know yet, please go over the recent live class recordings.

I took 3 interview prep sessions with IK seeking for preparing DE style interview. Was able to take 2 and understood the engineers are SE and they don't have any clue about DE coding and interview style. Those interviews never helped me and 1 interview was opted as I felt it didn't help me. The coordinator never helped to improve it ( forget about returning the money)

Do not recommend for DE prep