I applied online. The process took 6 days. I interviewed at Airbnb in Aug 2016
Interview
I applied to new grad position in August on their site and heard back from HR after 5 days. The HR was very prompt in replying and scheduling technical phone interview. I was asked a moderate question on integers and hashmap but the interviewer's accent made it very difficult to answer his questions. I started off telling him the implementation and solution of the problem and later he told me that he wanted me to implement hasNext(), next() and remove() function of Iterator class. His statements were very ambigious and unclear. After the coding part, when I was told to "explain testcases". I started off listing all the possible testcases for the problem. Another bummer, he wanted me to trace and run through the code with an example testcase. I don't think I will get through this round but it would be great to have someone with a clear accent as interviewer specially for telephonic interview.
I will definitely try again for Airbnb.
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.