Airbnb reviews about 15,000 applications a month and publishes almost nothing about what happens to them.
That is not an accusation. It's what Airbnb's own careers FAQ says, in a page that answers eight questions and manages to describe the entire interview process in three sentences. The longest of them is this: "Just like working here, the interview process is both rigorous and fun! Depending on the position, it may involve taking a test, making a video, or joining us for an event."
No stages. No round count. No durations. No named interview types. For a company whose interview process is described in exhaustive detail across dozens of prep sites, Airbnb has published less about it than almost any employer of comparable profile.
So this guide does something different from a stage-by-stage walkthrough, because writing one would require inventing the stages. It covers what Airbnb actually says, where every specific claim you have read came from, and why that source has quietly expired.
Everything Airbnb publishes about interviewing
The FAQ is the whole of it, and it's worth having in full because the useful parts are logistical.
Timeline. "We aim to respond to everyone within 3-4 weeks."
Volume. "We personally review about 15,000 applications each month!"
Feedback. "because of the sheer volume of applications, it's likely that you won't receive personalized feedback."
Format. The process "may involve taking a test, making a video, or joining us for an event," depending on the position. The video and the event are unusual enough to note, and Airbnb gives no further detail on either.
Who you meet. "Once the interview process has begun, we make it a priority for candidates to meet with multiple individuals on the current team. It's important to us that you and the team have every opportunity to ask the questions needed to make sure the position is right for you."
Sponsorship. "For the most part we only consider applicants who are already legally able to work in the country that the job is based in. Visa sponsorship is very rare and is only for specialized positions."
Where you can live. Airbnb states that employees cannot currently be located in Alaska, Mississippi, or North Dakota, and notes the list evolves.
That's it. Everything else written about interviewing at Airbnb comes from somewhere other than Airbnb.
Where the core values interview came from
Nearly every account of the Airbnb process describes a values or "host" interview run by people outside your function, often with the claim that they can sink you no matter how well the technical rounds went. That claim is not invented. It has a single source, and the source is nine years old.
In October 2019, Douglas John Atkin, Airbnb's former Global Head of Community, published a detailed description on Medium. Candidates got "six to eight interviews to assess their functional skills," and then "they also have to undergo two 'Core Values Interviews' with employees who are not in their discipline." He states plainly: "And they have veto power." He adds that "every new hire goes through this process, from interns to executives, and even members of the Board of Directors," and that Airbnb had trained "500 Core Values Interviewers... so 10% of the workforce has been rigorously trained."
That's a strong, specific, on-the-record account by a named executive. It is also anchored to a company that, in his own words, "has grown to over five thousand employees globally."
Airbnb now reports approximately 8,200 employees as of December 31, 2025. If the 500 interviewers were never scaled up, they're now 6 percent of the workforce, not 10. And that assumes the program still runs at all, through a period in which Airbnb cut about a quarter of its staff in May 2020 and rebuilt around a very different operating model.
Two things follow. The prep-site claim of "six to eight interviews" misquotes even this source, which describes six to eight functional interviews plus two values interviews on top. And a 2019 statement about a five-thousand-person company is being sold to you as a description of a 2026 process at an eight-thousand-person one.
The honest position is that Airbnb ran a values-gate with veto power at a documented point in its history, that its current status is unknown because Airbnb does not say, and that preparing to talk seriously about the company's values is sensible regardless.
What Airbnb does publish, which is its values
If the values round exists in any form, the material for it is public and specific. Airbnb's Life at Airbnb page lists four core values with one-line definitions:
- Champion the Mission. "We're united in partnership with our community to create connection, which enables belonging."
- Be a Host. "We're caring, open, and encouraging to everyone we work with."
- Embrace the Adventure. "We're driven by open curiosity, hopeful resilience, and the belief that every person can grow."
- Be a Cereal Entrepreneur. "We're determined and creative in transforming our bold ambitions into reality."
The fourth one trips people up. It refers to the cereal boxes the founders sold to fund the company, and it means resourcefulness under constraint rather than anything about breakfast. Candidates who have not looked it up sometimes try to interpret it live, which goes exactly as you would expect.
Preparing here does not mean memorizing the four. It means having one real story per value where you did the thing, ideally with an outcome you can be specific about. Our guide to answering behavioral questions with STAR covers building stories that hold up to a second and third follow-up, which is where rehearsed values answers usually collapse.
The thing worth interviewing there for
Airbnb publishes a genuine remote policy, not a slogan, and it's the most concrete thing on the careers site. The Live and Work Anywhere policy has five principles, and the second one is the one that matters financially: "Live anywhere in the country you're employed and compensation won't change."
No location-based pay adjustment for domestic moves. The other four principles cover working from home or an office, temporary international work with approval where regulations allow, regular team gatherings, and working "in a highly coordinated way."
Set that next to Uber, which moved to a three-day in-office requirement in June 2025, or Nvidia, which requires an in-person onsite before it will consider making you an offer. Three companies, three positions, and the difference is worth more to most candidates than a fifteen percent difference in base.
One more number from the annual report puts the company in perspective. Alongside those 8,200 employees, Airbnb "relied on a global network of approximately 13,000 third-party workers" to handle most community support contacts. The support organization is larger than the company. If you're interviewing into a support-adjacent role, that structure is the context for what your job actually is.
What to stop worrying about
"Host interviews." Airbnb has never published the term. It appears to be a rebranding of Atkin's 2019 core values interviews.
A timed HackerRank challenge with a stated difficulty band. Asserted confidently across prep sites, sourced nowhere. Airbnb names no coding platform anywhere.
"Six to eight interviews." Traceable to one 2019 post, which said something different, about a company half the current size.
"After the onsite you meet one to four hiring managers who sell you on their team." We could find no origin for this at all.
Software engineering internships. Airbnb's internship page lists US summer functions as communications, finance, legal, and public policy, with a December to February application window. Engineers should look at the Connect apprenticeship instead, which is aimed at people with "less than one year of professional software engineering experience," runs about five months in San Francisco, and is hybrid rather than remote.
The pattern worth taking away
A company that publishes nothing about its process is telling you something, even if it isn't trying to. Airbnb documents its values in detail, its remote policy in detail, and its interview mechanics not at all. The implication is that the mechanics vary and the values do not.
That is an awkward thing to prepare for, because you cannot rehearse a sequence you can't see. What you can do is arrive with real stories attached to four published values, ask your recruiter directly what the sequence is for your role, and refuse to plan around a round whose existence rests on one blog post from 2019.
For how Airbnb's silence compares against employers that publish their loops in detail, see our guide to how tech companies run their interview processes. The sharpest contrast is Salesforce, which publishes its grading criteria in order.