Airbnb's interviews are known for being incredibly comprehensive. While they may not have the notoriously tricky, hardcore technical questions you'd find at FAANG companies, they place a huge emphasis on cultural fit. The overall process feels similar to what you'd find at Google or Meta—it's fast-paced, with a series of video interviews covering coding, system design, and behavioral questions, along with plenty of follow-ups.
We collected a piece of content about an Airbnb interview experience from one of the candidates, a computer science PhD degree from a top North American university, who just took our interview support service to make the most complete interview guide for you.
After you submit your resume, an HR screener will review it. They especially love candidates with backgrounds in travel or e-commerce, or those with experience in recommendation systems. If you pass, you'll have a 30-minute phone call to discuss your background, career goals, and salary expectations.
This round is usually a 60-to-90-minute test on HackerRank, consisting of 2 to 3 algorithm questions.
Next are one or two 45-minute technical interviews. You’ll be coding on CoderPad in real-time while the interviewer watches.
This is the main event, consisting of 4 to 6 rounds that thoroughly evaluate your technical skills and personality. The content includes multiple coding rounds, a system design interview, a behavioral interview, and sometimes a meeting with an executive.
Airbnb interviewers emphasize that your code must run and pass all test cases. You also have to be ready for follow-up questions.
Round 1: One interview kicked off with a variant of the Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) problem. This wasn't a standard LeetCode problem—it required my student to adapt Prim's or Kruskal's algorithm. He got stuck on the edge-adding logic, and his palms started sweating. Fortunately, he stayed calm and walked through a small example, which immediately helped him spot the bug in the Disjoint Set Union (DSU) parent-node update. After fixing it, his code passed all the tests. The interviewer saw him calmly debug the issue and nodded, saying, “Nice catch.”
Round 2: In another interview, the question was about removing duplicates from a linked list with O(1) space complexity. The student initially proposed a solution using a HashSet, but the interviewer quickly followed up: "Can you do it without extra space?" He paused for a tense ten seconds, a bit stumped. Then, a lightbulb went off, and he started writing a two-pointer solution, which instantly brought the space complexity down. The interviewer then asked, “What if the linked list has a cycle?” This question tested his understanding of complex data structures and required him to think of Floyd's Cycle-Finding Algorithm.
Airbnb puts a huge emphasis on algorithms, so don't just stick to the basics. Make sure to practice tough problems like complex dynamic programming and graph theory.
This can be a tough round for new grads. Lacking real-world experience, they often miss the key details interviewers are looking for. Our candidate ran into this classic question:
Design an Airbnb photo storage and retrieval system. At first, he only thought about "uploading images to a server and indexing them by filename," completely ignoring the scale and high concurrency. The interviewer immediately followed up: "What if millions of users are uploading tens of thousands of photos per second?" He quickly pivoted to a discussion of CDN acceleration, distributed storage, and metadata management. This round, unexpectedly, became one of his strongest.
Another frequent question: Design an Airbnb-like listings recommendation system. The interviewer wanted to know how he would quickly recommend similar listings to a user browsing a specific one. A good approach involves using offline batch processing for a large number of listings, caching to reduce latency, and utilizing vector search to enhance recommendation quality.
Many candidates think this is the easiest round, but it's where people often stumble. Interviewers will ask about past projects and work experiences to verify what’s on your resume. They use "killer questions" to see how you handle real-world situations, such as:
"Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager."
The candidate had a story ready about a disagreement with his intern mentor over feature priorities, but his answer was too vague. The interviewer pressed him: "How did you communicate specifically? What was the outcome?" The student froze, and his voice became quieter. Luckily, our team reminded him via a backchannel to use the STAR framework: Situation, Task, Action, Result. He followed the framework, and his story became clear and logical; he added, "It taught me to use data, not emotion, to persuade others." This response left the interviewer very impressed.
Airbnb isn't just looking for technical experts; they're looking for teammates. They want to know if you believe in their core values like "Mission-Driven" and "Be a Host." So when you answer, don't just talk about your technical skills. Discuss how you’ve collaborated, resolved conflicts, and used data to drive your decisions on past projects.
Getting an offer is tough. Besides practicing on LeetCode, you can choose to have a dedicated assistant to help you. The CSOAsupport team offers services like OA assistance and VO interview proxy, using technology to help you ace interviews even if you're not fully prepared. Contact CSOAsupport to get a customized plan or to learn more about our success stories!
