Get a Job at Airbnb: Interview Process and Top Questions

Learn how to prepare for Airbnb interviews with this in-depth guide.

Now a giant in the tech world with over 5 million hosts offering properties to guests, Airbnb is a coveted place to work. Interview competition is high at Airbnb. Airbnb reviews over 15,000 applications per month. This is likely due to its great benefits, including a remote-first work-from-anywhere policy.

If you interview at Airbnb, you'll go through several tough rounds of interviews, assessments, and meetings with hiring managers and future teammates. Airbnb cares deeply about its unique mission of connection and belonging, so it’s careful to hire people who align with its values. 

Below, we summarize the Airbnb interview process and the top Airbnb interview questions you should expect to answer.

Airbnb Interview Process

The interview process is challenging. Airbnb states that candidates should expect an interview process like working there—“both rigorous and fun!” Airbnb cares deeply about its core values, so expect to be asked about them throughout the process.

Airbnb’s interview process typically takes about 4 weeks and is usually fast-moving between each round. Many candidates hear back from Airbnb just a few hours after a successful round.

The Airbnb interview process typically involves: 

• Recruiter phone screen,
• Technical challenge or hiring manager screen,
• Final round.  

Recruiter Phone Screen

Regardless of role, each Airbnb interview process starts with a recruiter phone screen. Expect this call to be a fairly standard recruiter call, about 30–45 minutes long.

Prepare to answer how you’ve demonstrated Airbnb’s core values in your previous work. The recruiter will ask basic questions, including: 

• Tell me about yourself.
• What are Airbnb’s core values? How do these core values apply to you?

While the call is mostly focused on behavioral questions, prepare to discuss your resume and answer a couple of domain-specific questions, too. Get to know Airbnb's core values and incorporate them into your answers to behavioral questions.

Technical Screen

The technical screen varies depending on the role you apply for.

Engineers do a live coding challenge, other technical roles receive a take-home challenge, and other non-technical roles have phone interviews. 

Engineering roles

Engineering roles get a HackerRank technical challenge to complete within 45 minutes. Airbnb’s coding challenges are medium to hard. And your code has to run, because Airbnb doesn’t accept pseudocode. 

To prepare, practice your speed. Set a timer and practice solving hard data structure and algorithm questions within 45 minutes.

Non-coding technical roles

Non-coding technical roles, such as data scientists, get a take-home technical challenge to complete within a few days. You’ll have to explain your take-home challenge with a short slide presentation in the final round.

This will likely involve SQL, data analysis, or ML models.

Non-technical roles

Non-technical roles like PMs get a hiring manager screen and a take-home case study. For the hiring manager screen, prepare to discuss your past roles, analytical, and behavioral questions. 

The case study typically involves product sense, analytical questions, and explaining your impact in past roles.

Final round

The final round at Airbnb involves multiple interviews with various stakeholders. It’s often an on-site interview at an Airbnb campus, although it may be conducted virtually.

The final round usually lasts a day and includes at least three one-hour role-specific interviews and a behavioral final round for all roles.

Hiring Decision

At Airbnb, the hiring manager makes the final decision. Even though you interview with various stakeholders throughout the process, the hiring manager gets the biggest say.

After a successful final round, expect to receive an offer quickly, within a few days or a week.

Top Airbnb Interview Questions

These are examples of real interview questions asked at Airbnb as reported by candidates.

Behavioral 

• Why do you want to work at Airbnb?
• Describe a time when you went above and beyond your job description.
• What does "belong anywhere" mean to you?
• Tell me about a time you were a good host.
• What part of our mission resonates the most with you?

Coding

• Given the head of two singly linked lists, write a function to return the point where they intersect (if any).
• Find the minimum window substring.
• Given two strings (Word 1 and Word 2) and a list of valid words from a dictionary, return the minimum number of operations required to convert Word 1 to Word 2.
• Give me an example of an engineering project you worked on recently.

System Design

• Design Airbnb's search functionality.
• Design Airbnb wallet.
• How would you build a chatbot service for the Airbnb platform?
• Share an example of a system you think is poorly designed.
• Design a rental room inventory management system.

Data

• Improve Airbnb’s recommendation algorithm for guests.
• Given the heads of two singly linked lists, write a function to return the point where they intersect (if any).
• How would you analyze the effects of a major change to a product if it were not possible to run an A/B test?
• How would you go about designing a metric for customer service calls?
• Assume an important metric goes down. How would you investigate the causes?

Machine Learning

• How would you improve Airbnb's recommendation algorithm for guests?
• Describe the steps to deploy a machine learning model to production.
• Explain the bias-variance tradeoff.
• Propose a machine learning solution to predict guest cancellations.
• Tell me about past projects you’ve worked on.

Product Management

• Assume you’re the PM at Airbnb. How would you increase bookings?
• How would you change the perception of hotels on Airbnb’s platform?
• Tell me about a time you disagreed with Engineering.
• What do you think are Airbnb’s biggest risks?
• What should Airbnb's key north star metrics be?

Airbnb Interview Loops

Behavioral 

Culture fit is crucial at Airbnb. The behavioral rounds at Airbnb begin with your first interview—the recruiter phone screen—and continue to the final round. 

Prepare specific anecdotes for behavioral interview questions.

Have several stories that showcase how you, personally and professionally, exemplify Airbnb’s 4 core values and its mission statement, "To create a world where anyone can belong anywhere." 

Coding

Airbnb's coding rounds are difficult. Expect the coding challenges to be medium to hard. And prepare to run code since Airbnb doesn’t accept pseudocode.

Coding challenges at Airbnb are often algorithm challenges, so be sure to practice these ahead of time.

Expect 1–2 technical coding rounds at your on-site, typically focused on algorithms and data structures. The on-site coding interviews are led by leaders in software engineering and cross-functional teams you’ll work with. 

Be sure to communicate while coding, because Airbnb interviewers assess your problem-solving and thought process in addition to your coding knowledge. 

Common coding topics in Airbnb interviews:

• Sorting algorithms
• Binary search
• Stacks and queues
• Graph search
• Arrays
• Recursion
• Code debugging
• Dynamic programming
• UI in-app coding

System Design 

For the on-site Airbnb system design rounds, expect to design a complex, scalable system that’s part of an Airbnb product or feature, so get to know Airbnb’s products ahead of time to prepare. Remember to take a systematic approach, cover all requirements, and choose a practical design. 

The system design round is about decision-making as much as it’s about the final design, so remember to be clear in your explanations.

Practice for the system design rounds by studying up on the following concepts: 

• APIs
• Availability
• Load balancing
• SQL vs. NoSQL
• Caching

Machine Learning

As part of your final ML round at Airbnb, you’ll have to present your take-home technical challenge—most likely an algorithm coding challenge—to an interview panel, and your presentation should explain your reasoning and choices. 

For the next round, prepare for another technical challenge, which assesses ML implementation. You’ll most likely get a whiteboard problem featuring a current Airbnb product, asking how to use ML to solve the problem.

Lastly, prepare for a conversational round, where you’ll be asked in-depth questions about a past ML project to assess your domain knowledge.

To prepare, get to know Airbnb’s ML projects:

• Categories: ML system powering Airbnb’s Categories feature, which suggests broad groups of stays to users who don’t yet know where they want to go.
• Chronon: A Declarative feature engineering framework developed by Airbnb.
• Home prioritization: Using ML to determine which stay aspects are most important to users and then ranking stays with those features higher in search results.
• Also, get to know Airbnb’s non-ML features and how ML could be applied to them.

Data

Airbnb’s data final round typically consists of 2 interviews lasting 45–60 minutes each. The first is a technical interview, where you present and explain your take-home challenge from the technical challenge to a panel. 

The technical take-home challenge is usually a data analysis problem where you recommend changes to an existing Airbnb product. Expect to create a slide presentation explaining your reasoning, findings, and code from the challenge. Prepare to discuss a past project you’ve worked on as well. 

Your second interview will be with the hiring manager, where you propose solutions to technical problems, involving SQL and a mini-case study, which is, again, typically data analysis. 

Prepare by studying the Airbnb product and identifying any data problems users might face. 

Product Management

Airbnb’s product management final round includes at least 2 interviews conducted by leaders from PM and cross-functional teams you’ll work with. 

Expect to present on the second-round take-home challenge, which focuses on product sense and data analytical skills.

Practice explaining your thought process, problem-solving, and preparing for follow-up questions. 

For the second round, prepare to discuss role-specific questions and product case studies. Bring anecdotes from past roles that detail your impact. 

Airbnb Interview Tips

Airbnb prioritizes culture fit.

Airbnb cares about experience for every role, but behavioral knowledge is just as important because Airbnb wants employees who embody its mission of creating belonging.

To prepare for this, practice behavioral questions for each round.

Airbnb’s technical assessments are challenging.

Airbnb wants the best talent, so it gives technical challenges aligned with that goal.

Prepare thoroughly for the technical challenges in the second round of your interview because the challenges are intentionally difficult. The technical assessments are often at a hard level, and because the challenges are only 45 minutes long, you’ll have to code quickly. 

Airbnb expects you to know the ins and outs of its company and product.

Airbnb interview questions are often product-specific. Airbnb interviewers expect you to know the product inside and out to work there, so don’t just study broad domain knowledge, but practice for in-depth questions about Airbnb’s products.

FAQs

How difficult are Airbnb interviews? 

Airbnb interviews are challenging. The competition is steep, with over 15,000 applicants a month and multiple rounds, so your interview process could last a couple of weeks up to a few months.

You must prepare to move on at each round and land the job. 

How do I stand out as a candidate at Airbnb?

While domain knowledge is important, Airbnb’s behavioral rounds are a key test you’ll have to pass, too. Know Airbnb’s core values and have specific stories ready for each interview to prove how you’ve demonstrated each value in your previous work experience. 

Airbnb Interview Prep Resources

Exponent has extensive resources to prepare you to feel your best when it comes time for your interview at Airbnb:

💬 Brush up on interview questions asked at Airbnb 

📖 Read through these role-specific Airbnb interview guides