I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA) in Dec 2014
Interview
There is an elitist atmosphere during hiring and you are expected to be a ninja before they hire you, rather than giving you opportunities to grow after coming in. The telephonic interview bar is crazy high and you need to crack a hard dynamic Programing problem within 30 mins. Cocky kids fresh out of college who interview you are quick to judge and reject you if you fumble in the first few minutes. I'd definitely not be comfortable working in such a hostile environment where you're constantly being judged.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a set of numbers in an array which represent number of consecutive days of AirBnB reservation requested, as a host, pick the sequence which maximizes the number of days of occupancy, at the same time, leaving atleast 1 day gap in between bookings for cleaning. Problem reduces to finding max-sum of non-consecutive array elements.
// [5, 1, 1, 5] => 10
The above array would represent an example booking period as follows -
// Dec 1 - 5
// Dec 5 - 6
// Dec 6 - 7
// Dec 7 - 12
The answer would be to pick dec 1-5 (5 days) and then pick dec 7-12 for a total of 10 days of occupancy, at the same time, leaving atleast 1 day gap for cleaning between reservations.
Similarly,
// [3, 6, 4] => 7
// [4, 10, 3, 1, 5] => 15
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA) in Nov 2015
Interview
Didn't pass the first technical phone interview. They gave me a very challenging coding question and I had to code in an online environment where they actually run the code.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA)
Interview
I first talked with an employee at my school's career fair and from there I was contacted by a recruiter to set up a phone interview. After the first one I was contacted to have one more just to get another read. I thought the next phone interview went really well and I connected with the interviewer a ton too.
After that I was contacted to schedule an onsite!
On my onsite I had a few practical coding questions, a couple culture fit questions, had a great tour of the building, and had an awesome lunch with one of the employees. Through this process I was able to talk with a ton of people across different departments and overall had an awesome experience.
The office is beautiful and the employees I talked to all really genuinely care about the product, the mission, the company, their peers, and their users. Airbnb really grew on me over the interview process as I discovered more about the company, it's values, and the people who work their. I really connected with each employee I talked with and the answers they gave for any questions I asked all really struck me because it showed how much they were excited about and truly cared for their users and for Airbnb.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Practical coding questions during the phone screenings and onsite. Also culture fit questions at the onsite which were quite fun! (I cannot disclose specifics)