Airbnb Product Manager Interviews

Awesome, absurd, or all of the above? You tell me.

I recently completed a quest to discover my next step as a Product Manager — I must say, the job search definitely did not disappoint as an emotional rollercoaster. I can probably write a post about each of the companies that I went through the interview process with, but I’ve decided to focus on Airbnb in this post because my experience with them included moments that I consider totally awesome as well as some real head-scratchers. Before diving into my story, here are some disclaimers:

• I have anonymized as much as possible: I genuinely enjoyed meeting everyone at Airbnb and truly believe that they are good people trying to make the world a better place. Therefore, I want to critique the process without publicly incriminating any individuals.
• I will provide no interview questions: I will not disclose the questions that I was asked during any interviews. They’re under NDA, and also they’re outside of the scope of why I wrote this post.
• Airbnb’s Seattle office is young: the positions I interviewed for would have been the first or second PM hires for their Seattle office. One might expect certain processes to not be totally ironed out yet.
• I am a fan of Airbnb’s product: throughout my travels I’ve used Airbnb quite extensively, both as a host and as a guest. They have definitely enriched my travel experience, and their mission resonates with me.

Cool, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s embark on this journey! A little bit of background — Airbnb’s recruiting team appears to work in pods of three. Let me try to give them each a label as I will need to refer back to them throughout the story:

1. Sourcer: handles early-round interviews and conducts the initial screen to qualify candidates and set expectations for the process.
2. Recruiter: handles the late-round interviews.
3. Coordinator: handles the back-office logistics of all interviews, including scheduling, travel needs, accommodation, expense reports, etc.

Phase 1: Initial Phone Interviews

I was referred to Airbnb by a friend. A couple of weeks after my friend sent in my resume, the Sourcer contacted me to set up a call. After that, I had two phone interviews: one with the hiring manager, and another with a PM peer on the team that I was interviewing with. These calls were nothing too out of the ordinary. After these three calls, I was invited to interview onsite at Airbnb’s Seattle office.

Phase 2: Onsite Interviews — Seattle Office

On my Seattle onsite loop, I met an Engineering Manager, a Designer, and my hiring manager in person. Each interview was 30 minutes long, and everything felt fairly casual. I enjoyed meeting everyone and felt like I really connected with the people there. I went home feeling optimistic, and a few days later I was invited to interview onsite at Airbnb’s HQ in San Francisco.

Phase 3: Onsite Interviews — San Francisco HQ

The onsite interview at Airbnb HQ was definitely one of my favorite experiences over last couple of months of job searching. Up until this point, most of the discussions on the phone or in-person had been behavioral or questions about items on my resume. For the HQ loop, the day mostly revolved around a one-hour presentation about a prompt that was provided a few days in advance. Here’s a summary of my day:

• Presentation to interview panel (60 min.)
• Lunch interview (45 min.)
• One-on-one’s with two members of the interview panel (30 min. each)
• Interview with the hiring manager’s manager (30 min.)
• Two “culture fit” interviews (30 min. each)
• Wrap-up with hiring manager (15 min.)
• Wrap-up with the Recruiter (15 min.)

Presentation to Panel

My prompt was fairly vague as expected, and all-in-all I spent around 25 hours prepping and practicing for my presentation. Although it was time-consuming, I felt that this approach approximated the real day-to-day of the PM job much more closely than hypothetical design or problem-solving questions. I also enjoyed working on the problem and talking about it, so I didn’t mind.

My audience at the presentation comprised the following:

• The hiring manager (Product Lead)
• Design, data science, and engineering manager counterparts
• All three members of my recruiting team

The presentation felt fairly casual — I sat next to the panelists (instead of standing up in front) and talked through my slides. The panelists asked good, thoughtful questions about certain decisions or assumptions I made along the way. They seemed very engaged, and I enjoyed getting a feel for what it would be like to work with this team on a daily basis.

I also thought it was cool that the recruiting team was a part of the presentation. They were included in the process beyond just scheduling and bringing candidates in, demonstrating an inclusive culture at the company.

One-on-one Interviews

After the presentation, I met with two of the panelists for 30 minutes each, where they asked follow-up questions about my presentation along with anything else that they wanted to dig deeper on. I appreciated the extra face time with them as I would have worked closely with them had I gotten the job.

I also met with a Director of Product who is my hiring manager’s manager.

Culture Fit Interviews

The loop included two, 30-minute interviews with people who were not functionally related to the role. Their job was get to know me and figure out if I would be a good culture fit for Airbnb. I really enjoyed these two interviews because I felt like I made real connections with two high-quality human beings. I never thought that I could get points at a job interview for who I am outside of work, but I really felt like I did this time. Awesome!

The Follow-up

About a week after the HQ loop, the Recruiter called me and told me that they would like to move forward with me. Apparently, it is customary for PM candidates who pass the full loop to have an additional interview with another product leader to gauge culture fit specifically for Airbnb’s PM team. I found this a bit strange and wondered what this additional step could possibly provide for the hiring team that the previous interviewers could not. But hey, I’ll play ball.

The Recruiter also told me that it is rare for people to make it this far and not receive an offer. We had some brief discussions around expectations for compensation, and they sent me a document summarizing Airbnb’s employee benefits. I was ecstatic and super excited by the thought that I might get to work on one of my favorite products with the great people I met throughout my interviews. Woohoo!

A few days later, the Coordinator reached out and scheduled my “final phone interview with Airbnb.”

Phase 4: Final Phone Interview

So I had my 30-minute call with another Product Lead from a different feature area. The call went fine, but I had a hard time imagining how it provided any additional data to help inform the hiring decision.

A week later, my Recruiter called me and told me that there had been a reorg. They originally decided to hire two PMs (myself and another more senior person), but the reorg changed their mind. They decided to hire just one PM instead, and they chose the other, more senior person. They were no longer considering me for this role. But good news — there was another PM opening in the Seattle office on a different team, and so they asked me if I would like to be considered for that role. I was disappointed by the news, but life happens right? So of course, I said yes.

Around this time, I received an offer from another company. I emailed my recruiting team to tell them about this, hoping to speed things up a bit in case I still needed to have additional interviews with this new team. The Sourcer responded nearly immediately, saying that they will follow-up with the hiring manager since the Recruiter is out-of-office. The next day, the Coordinator scheduled me for yet another onsite interview loop at the Seattle office.

Phase 5: Onsite Interviews — Seattle Office (again)

I met two engineers from the new team that I was now interviewing with. The conversations were lively, and I felt good coming out. I knew that the process wasn’t over yet though, as I still hadn’t met the hiring manager for this new role yet.

A couple of days later, the Recruiter called me and told me that they’ve decided to put hiring on hold for that role. Apparently the reorg created a lot of ambiguity around headcount for that team. They assured me that they weren’t moving forward with hiring anyone for the role, and estimated that they will need about a month to decide what to do with their headcount. Given my circumstances, they encouraged me to take my other offer.

Conclusion

I am still a fan of Airbnb, and I will continue to cheer for them. Being the geek that I am, I was curious about how much time and energy went into this entire process. Here are some statistics I found interesting:

• I spoke with 15 Airbnb employees.
• I spent 585 minutes (9.75 hours) interviewing across 18 appointments, excluding time spent traveling to/from their offices as well as calls with the recruiting team purely to discuss results and next steps.
• I spent ~25 hours working on the presentation.
• The entire process spanned ~2.5 months.

Here are some more qualitative thoughts & opinions:

What I Liked

• The presentation was useful and fun. Though time-consuming, it was a good simulation of the job. I found it highly valuable for determining whether I would be a good fit for the role/team and vice versa.
• The culture interviews were heart-warming. I deeply appreciate how much the company and team cared about who I am holistically, rather than just what I am capable of as a PM.
• They were thoughtful enough to consider me for another team. I appreciate the intention and flexibility they showed by trying to get me into the process with a different team.

Some Head Scratchers

• My Recruiter was very unprofessional. The Recruiter no-showed me on two occasions, called 15 minutes late once, and called 20 minutes early another time. The Recruiter was good about setting expectations for when I will hear back, but often failed to meet those deadlines. I don’t claim to be an expert on recruiting, but had I been the hiring manager, I definitely wouldn’t have wanted this person to be working on my open requisitions.
• Is this how decisions get made at Airbnb? If this experience is any indication of their decision-making process, how do they launch new products? Do they really need 13 employees to interview a candidate 15 times over two months to reach a hiring decision? Would a PM have to jump through this many hoops to get anything done?
• Please value my time. As someone who just returned from a gap year, I have been living off of my emergency fund. I would have appreciated a speedier interview process.

Don’t be a stranger,

— Patrick