I applied online. I interviewed at Airbnb (New York, NY) in Dec 2016
Interview
1 phone interview & 1 skype interview before onsite interviews consisting of 2 cross-functional and 2 technical interviews. They stress a lot on culture fit but do not ask until onsite interviews. All interviews prior to onsite for me were literally the interviewer introducing themselves and diving into solving the problem on coderpad. They didn't ask anything about me as they say they want to give as much time to solve the problem. Focus on getting your solution running correctly and bug-free within the time frame they give you.
Onsite:
The 2 cross-functional interviews were basically fun conversations not related to the role - aimed to see culture fit/aligned mission with company. Was asked to bring my laptop and have IDE prepared. No white board coding - they want to see running code on laptop.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Palindrome Pairs, questions on string manipulation
Received an email from the recruiter with some helpful tips how to prepare. I have not been practicing leetcode questions but the one I got was easy... if it was in python (was not an option)
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Airbnb in Oct 2019
Interview
After the university Hackerrank test, I received an email in about a week to do a 90-minutes phone interview. The questions were moderately tough compared to other FAANGULTAD interviews.
The first interview went well and I was able to come up with a working solution within the given timeframe. The interviewer seemed to be satisfied with the solution and I proceeded to the second round. The second interview didn't go as expected though. The interviewer was nice but was inexperienced at interviewing candidates. I usually try to brainstorm a few ideas, discuss my solutions with the interviewer, and pick the best solution and code it up. However, whenever I verbally expressed my thought process, the interviewer intervened and asked if this is the best and tried to nudge me down towards his way of thinking. I really appreciate that he was trying to help, but not everyone's thought process works the same. I could've ultimately arrived at the same optimized solution but because the interviewer kept interrupting throughout my initial brainstorming stage, my thoughts got tangled up and did not perform too well. I was able to get to a working solution, but I think the second interviewer was dissatisfied that I couldn't think in his way immediately. I think Airbnb should train interviewers better to get the most out of their candidates.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA) in Dec 2018
Interview
Hacker rank -> virtual onsite -> onsite. They usually got back within a week of the interview. The technical questions varied a lot but were usually difficult. The office is really great!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Talk about how your life relates to airbnb core values.