I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA) in Oct 2017
Interview
The interview process was smooth, I applied on their website and a recruiter reached out fairly quickly stating interest in my background and experience. I was thrilled and was quickly moved onto the phone screen stage. The phone screen went smoothly, the question was a rudimentary FE product request type of question to quickly wire up. Feedback came back within a few days and they invited me onsite in SF. They covered flight and a $400 coupon for AirBnB lodging, with expense reports to submit food and other misc expenses afterwards. On the day of the interview I showed up and was greeted by a very beautiful recruiter, she escorted me to the den where they conduct interviews, a small room with an iMac hooked up to the wall and a terrible keyboard and mouse. Interviewers came one after the other, and in my opinion they all went very smoothly. I felt like I knocked the FE coding questions out of the park as they were fairly rudimentary. I did stumble somewhat in the BE coding question and that threw me off my base a little but I felt like I rebounded decently well, producing a working solution to the problem set. I thoroughly enjoyed the cross-functional questions, as both interviewers were very polite and welcoming and allowed me to take the conversation anywhere. All in all I had a great experience and left their office hoping for/anticipating good feedback. The next working day I received feedback that they had positive signals but not enough to move forward with an offer at this time. They communicated that they'd be open to revisiting the process in 6-8 months but I'm sure that's the standard rejection template. I asked for more details, but the recruiter admitted to not being technical and stated that "code quality and execution" were stated as stopping points. My only take away is that the questions may be deliberately easy to test other coding skills that I wasn't being mindful of. I'm definitely dissatisfied with the result, usually I know beforehand whether I performed well or not, and in this circumstance I wish I could've received more detailed feedback to better understand where they felt things went wrong.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
2 FE coding questions, 1 BE coding question - Grounded around real life problems or product requests - not BS coding challenges. 2 cross functional interviews with random personality questions.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA)
Interview
I worked with a recruiter that reached out to me via LinkedIn. Initially I wasn't looking to interview but after a few months the recruiter contacted me again and it was a better time then, so I gave it shot. The phone screens went really well and I thought the onsites went well too.
However, the experience left me quite confused. Two days after the interview, the recruiter sent me an email with false hopes. The email read along the lines of "Let's discuss the next steps", then when we talked on the phone I was told that although all the interviews went really well, one of them wasn't excellent, and therefore they are sad to deliver the bad news.
Honestly, I wasn't totally convinced that I wanted to work for Airbnb but I thought I'd give it a shot since the company talks so much about "compassion" and "belonging". l don't believe compassionate people use non-transparent language to communicate, and also I don't believe smart people value other people only on the basis of a single interview not being "excellent".
Phone screen 1:
HTML/CSS/JavaScript problem on CodePen
Phone screen 2:
JavaScript problem on CodePen
Onsite:
Three coding interviews, one lunch, two cross-functional, and one about your past experience working on a project.
I liked that I was able to write code in CodePen instead of a whiteboard or any other environments where you can't execute code at all. Additionally I enjoyed the cross functional parts because it allowed me to be more relaxed. I thought the Frontend focused questions were pragmatic and realistic for the most part. I have mixed feelings about the one general coding question - the interviewer of this question was constantly pulling me in different directions as if he/she was trying to confuse me on purpose.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I signed their NDA and can't disclose, but strong UI, JavaScript, and general programming experience is needed.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA) in Mar 2017
Interview
Smooth interview process, airbnb recruiter was super nice and helped me through the process.
1. Quick chat with the recruiter about the role and the process
2. Technical phone interview
3. Onsite with 2 FE, 1 CS, 1 Experience & 2 Cultural fit interviews
- FE: fun FE mini projects on codepen with the choice of your framework (I used React)
- CS: leetcode medium difficulty question
- Experience: chance to really dig into a past project & what would I build in Airbnb
- Cultural fit: chat about my values, interests and personality
Although I didnt get an offer (one of my FE interview was all right) overall it was a great experience!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most of the technical question types are already posted here - they are pretty standard interview questions. Recruiter helps to prep for the Experience & Cultural fit interviews.