Airbnb Interview Process in 2023

Discover Airbnb's Hiring Process and Questions

Posted by Brian Jobs on October 25, 2022 · 6 mins read

Airbnb Interview Process

Airbnb is one of the best places to work due it's mission, culture, benefits, and of course working remotely or in the office.

Building that amazing culture at Airbnb starts with hiring the best people in the world. Hence, we've a compiled list of datapoints from multiple sources to get you familiar with the hiring process and would like to share them with you.

So, let's dive in!


Airbnb's Interview Process

Ok Airbnb applicant - you found a job you're interested in and applied with your resume/CV and cover letter.

What's next?

We'll it depends...

If you're applying for a Airbnb Software Engineer Job, then the interview process is ~ 2-6 rounds.

On the other hand, if you're applying for a product management job, then the interview process would take ~1-3 rounds.

Let's see an Airbnb Software Engineer interview example from Exponent[1]:

After submitting an application, you'll go through the following interviews. The entire process took around 2 weeks to four months based on the data we've gathered.

1. Recruiter Phone Screen

First, a recruiter will contact you. The screening call will be about 30 minutes and will be very general. You'll touch on key experiences in your resume, answer some introductory behavioral questions, and learn more about the team you applied for. You don't have to prepare much for this screen - review your resume, prepare a few questions based on the job description, and read up on Airbnb's culture.

2. Coding Interview

Next, you'll do a coding round. It will like last about 45 minutes and you'll be expected to answer medium / hard Leetcode questions. Coding interviews at Airbnb can be very challenging - no pseudocode here, so be sure to prepare at a level of detail that means your code will pass test cases. Interviewees recommend reviewing basics like searching a binary tree, dfs/bfs, queues/stacks, sort algorithms, etc.

3. Onsite Interview

Another rigorous round. You'll sit for five one-hour rounds of algorithmic (leetcode medium / hard), systems design, and cultural questions. If you're visiting an office, you'll also have lunch with an employee in the middle of the day. After the onsite, you may hear back as late as a week on the final decision.

Next, we'll look at the types of questions Airbnb asks in more detail, along with practice questions to help you prepare via Glassdoor.


Airbnb's Interview Questions

Here's a list of diffrent types software engineer interview questions from interviewees via Glassdoor [2]:

Software Engineer Interview - Oct 10, 2022

  • Online Assessments
  • 1 Manager Round
  • Multiple Hard Leetcode Question Round

Software Engineer Interview - Jan 25, 2022

  • 2 Design System Question Rounds
  • 1 Manager Round
  • 1 Medium Leetcode Question Round

Software Engineer Interview - 11 08, 2021

  • Development Round
  • algorithm Round
  • Bug Fixing

Now let's take a look at some inverivew questions that Airbnb's employees may ask via InterviewKickstart [3]:

Programming Interview Questions

  • Given: A string str
  • Task: Find a way to convert it into a palindrome by inserting characters in front of it and the shortest palindrome that can be returned
  • Find the sum of all right leaves in a given binary tree.
  • Given: A string of alphanumeric characters with a length between 0 and 1000
  • Task: Return the first character in the string that does not repeat
  • Design an algorithm that takes a string, for example, abc, and prints out all possible permutations of the string.
  • Design a file system that lets you create new paths and associate them with different values.
  • Design an iterator to flatten a 2D vector. It should support next and hasNext operations.
  • Given: A list of unique words
  • Task: Return all the pairs of distinct indices (i, j) so that the concatenation of the two words, words[i] + words[j], is a palindrome
  • Given: An array of distinct integers, candidates, and a target integer target
  • Task: Return a list of all unique combinations of candidates, where the sum of numbers is target
  • Given: A puzzle board
  • Take: Return the least number of moves required so that the state of the board is solved; if it is impossible, return -1
  • Given: A positive integer n
  • Task: Write a method to return the fewest number of perfect-square numbers that sum to n

Behavioral Interview Questions

  • Describe one of the creative things you’ve done recently.
  • What is the scariest thing you've ever done?
  • What is your view on Airbnb China?
  • How would you improve Airbnb’s website?
  • What is Airbnb’s mission?
  • What is your view on Airbnb’s future in 5 years?
  • Describe Airbnb to a person back in 2003.
  • Describe a company that you think is doing really well.
  • What do you like about Airbnb?
  • What is one thing you’d like to remove from Airbnb?

System Design Interview Questions

  • How would you design Google’s database for web indexing?
  • How would you design Twitter’s trending topics?
  • How would you design Dropbox?
  • How would you design a ticketing platform?
  • How would you design Instagram Stories?
  • How would you design Facebook?
  • How would you design a real-time ranking system for Fortnite?
  • How would you design Amazon.com?
  • How would you design a system that counts the number of clicks on YouTube videos?
  • How would you design YouTube Shorts?

Interested in reading about Airbnb's History, Benefits, Culture and Salary?

Learn More > Airbnb Careers


References:

1. SWE Interview Questions - Exponent

2. Software Interview Questions - Glassdoor

3. Airbnb Interview Questions - Interviewkickstart