Airbnb's mission is to create a world where people can belong anywhere. The company invests significant time and effort into attracting diverse, talented candidates, and creating a welcoming company culture. As the company expands, it's always looking to hire highly technical, hands-on, mission-driven Engineering Managers to lead engineering efforts.

EM roles at Airbnb are often domain-specific, but the company recruits from a huge pool of applicants. The interview process itself emphasizes management experience and fit along the company's core values, as it's a given that candidates' technical skills will be sharp.

We spoke to an Airbnb EM and experienced EM interviewer who gave us the low-down on the interview loop. Her biggest piece of advice? "The main thing would be just to study up the company's mission and have examples of how you've demonstrated each [value] in the past."

Let's dive into the details of the EM interview loop.

Overview

The general structure of Airbnb's EM interview loop is similar to other large tech companies. You'll begin with a few screening calls, and if you do well, you'll move on to an on-site with 4-6 rounds.

Recruiter phone screen

First, a recruiter will set up a call. Airbnb recruiters go above and beyond, so if there’s a better fit out there than the position you initially applied for, your recruiter will work hard to get you connected with the right hiring manager.

The phone screen typically lasts from 30-45 minutes and consists mainly of behavioral questions. Airbnb is fanatic about employing candidates who embody its core values:

• Champion the Mission: Create a global experience of belonging for anyone, anywhere.
• Be a Host: Serve others so they feel they belong. Everyone is a guest.
• Embrace the adventure:We have fun welcoming uncertainty. We master chaos through flexibility and youthful curiosity.
• Be a Cereal Entrepreneur: Everyone is creative. Think scary big. Volunteer for impossible situations. Get things done.

Put your best foot forward by preparing a few examples of how you embody these values in your life (both personal and professional).

Your domain-specific knowledge will also be lightly explored. Recruiters won’t go super deep with you, but you should be prepared to talk through your resume in a crisp manner.

Hiring Manager Phone Screen

Once you pass the initial recruiting phone screens, you’ll be connected with your hiring manager. This will be another 30-45 min phone screen. Expect to go more in-depth on your domain knowledge here. The hiring manager will be evaluating whether you have the skills to warrant the onsite interview loop. Have plenty of anecdotes prepared to illustrate your knowledge of both Airbnb’s business model and how your experience has set you up to be an asset. And never forget Airbnb's mission: "create belonging anywhere." It's completely within your power to embody that mission as a manager, so be sure to infuse your stories with this quality.

Airbnb employees work hard to build a culture of trust, and transparency is valued. Feel free to take these screens as opportunities to ask questions on Airbnb’s culture, priorities, processes - anything on your mind.

On-site

The onsite interview lasts roughly half a day and includes 4-6 rounds falling into 3-4 categories. These categories are:

• Architecture / System Design
• Experience Round (similar to a project retrospective)
• Cross-functional Round
• Leadership Round optional - only for very senior candidates

The architecture / system design round mirrors other system design interviews you may be familiar with. You'll be asked to design a system, likely something relevant to Airbnb's operations. We'll give you a much more detailed overview next.

The experience interview is an interesting one. It's quite similar to Stripe's project retrospective or Dropbox's technical deep-dive, in that you'll be asked to describe a single, complex project you worked on. You'll be asked numerous and detailed follow-up questions for roughly an hour. The point of the experience interview is to get a good understanding of technical abilities and decision making skills, but at Airbnb in particular, your project management abilities and your management style are explored in-depth.

The cross-functional interview is highly important at Airbnb. A cross-functional peer, say a PM or a designer, will ask you experiential and hypothetical questions about how you've worked (or would work) with them. They're evaluating your communication skills, conflict resolution tactics, and how much of a team player you are. You may be asked some light project management questions around resource allocation, but don't forget that the point of this round is to prove that you'll be an effective and pleasant co-worker.

Finally, you'll undergo a leadership round if you're interviewing for a very senior position -- director level, etc. These are relatively rare. Senior candidates will be interviewed by senior interviewers on their management and leadership abilities, and qualities like strategic vision. Core values are also stressed again heavily.

A current EM at Airbnb reported that the company "changed how we make the decision to hire in 2020. At Airbnb, before it was all based on the interview panel, and the interview panel would come to a consensus with guidance from the recruiter. And the recruiter would kind of make the group lean one way or another, depending on how they saw the general group feeling. But it's very consensus driven.

In 2020, we changed it so that the hiring manager actually makes the final decision. [That means] this person could have gotten two No's, but the hiring manager still looks at the packet and if they really want this person they can actually bring them on. But all the feedback still goes to a leveling committee that decides what level this person is brought on. And the hiring manager makes the final decision on whether or not they're hired."