I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Airbnb (Princeton, NJ) in Oct 2015
Interview
Applied through CODE2040, had an initial phone screen which went well, then had an hour long technical interview on CodePair. The interviewer was somewhat hard to understand, and he was not giving great hints as to how to solve the problem that he gave me. Overall, it was a neutral experience for me.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Return all palindrome pairs from an array of strings.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Airbnb in Oct 2019
Interview
One coding challenge Leetcode Med-Hard. They there are 2 back to back interviews via coderpad video call. Then a culture fit. I didn't make it past the video coding interviews.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Airbnb in Sep 2018
Interview
Consisted of a 1 hour HackerRank, 2 back to back technical Skype interviews, and 1 culture fit interview. The HackerRank was pretty challenging and time constrained. I would recommend studying up on algorithms, keeping your composure, and planning out your thought process before typing as fast as you can. The Skype interviews were difficult, but not as impossible as some of the other stories I've read online. To study for this, I would recommend beefing up your knowledge on graph theory and studying traversals / search algorithms. The culture fit interview was a normal, less conversational behavioral interview. For this one, just try and be yourself and prepare like you would for a normal behavioral interview. Definitely doesn't hurt to prepare for questions you'll 100% get like "Why Airbnb?" and "What was your last Airbnb experience? How was it?"
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1 unique algorithm question, 2 graph questions (DFS and tree traversal), and all the normal behavioral questions
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA) in Feb 2018
Interview
Software engineering questions were all leetcode. Cultural questions were interesting. The systems design was a fun exercise. Their deep dive into the project interview is odd to me. Not sure what it shows to deep dive into it since people can fake it easily especially if they are quite the talker.
Despite all the mishaps on AirBnb's side, I got through the day. First mishap was that the first remote interview was cut off for about 5-10 mins due to technical issues and had to use the recruiter's laptop to continue. Second mishap was during the first coding interview, we could not figure out how to make the supplied mac mini work, so that delayed the interview schedule. Final mishap and the biggest, was that a lunch interviewer did not show up which caused a architecture interview to be canceled, which meant that I would have had to come in a second time to rectify that... Imagine if I had not come into an interview...
This is not the experience I expected from AirBnb under any circumstance. Interviews are stressful enough. I do not believe I would have come in for a second architecture interview had I been invited as enough of my time (8 hours) was used already and I have other onsite interviews.