[throwaway987978]

Yeah I hear you. I've struggled with the exact same problem. The stress doesn't help and often times I've figured out the answer just 5 or 10 minutes after the interview was done. I know I got rejected from Amazon and then a week later I was doing practice interviews on interviewing.io and the guy who was mock interviewing me said that he works at Amazon and that I should apply. I had to tell him that I did apply and just got rejected from an onsite interview the week before.

Yeah, referrals at these sized companies only help to get a recruiter to pay attention. It doesn't really help. I've even gotten interviews just by searching LinkedIn for ___ recruiter and messaging them directly.

FWIW, I recently attended the Outco sales pitch and they do have a almost guaranteed payment option. Instead of paying up front you can pay nothing and then pay 10% of your first year's base salary. Obviously that would cost you more than if you had paid up front but that could be an option.

[decafninja]

Thanks, I'll check out Outco. Scheduled an info session with them next week.

One other thing that did make me hesitate Interview Kickstart though were that they seemed to be for generalist SWE only, not frontend. The person I spoke with said FEE would have the same interview problems/track as any other SWE, but my personal experience over the past two years has shown me this is usually not the case.

Also would be concerned about what IK/Outco considers a "success". I'm only targeting a relatively small subset of companies (FAANG, obviously, plus others at similar level). So my definition of success (aforementioned companies) vs. theirs (any company?) might be different. A question to ask during the info session I suppose.