Airbnb Software Engineer Interview: The Core Values Round, Explained

TL;DR: Airbnb publishes its four core values, and candidate reports describe an onsite round that scores you against them. The round format itself isn't officially documented. Prepare one specific story per value, practice real, runnable code rather than pseudocode, and ask your recruiter which tools are allowed in each technical round.

Source note: values and process statements come from careers.airbnb.com. Round structure and the code review round come from third-party guides and a single candidate write-up. Where it's only reported, we say so.

Most "Airbnb interview" guides hand you the same list of rounds and the same list of values, without saying which parts Airbnb has actually put in writing. That matters here more than at most companies, because the round everyone talks about, the core values interview, is the one Airbnb says the least about.

What Airbnb Says Officially

Two pages on careers.airbnb.com cover most of what's confirmed.

The FAQ page says the interview process is "both rigorous and fun," that depending on the position it may involve "taking a test, making a video, or joining us for an event," and that once interviews begin candidates meet multiple people on the current team. It also says Airbnb aims to respond within 3–4 weeks of an application, that you don't have to be a host or guest to work there (though they encourage you to spend time on the site), and that they review about 15,000 applications a month.

The Life at Airbnb page lists the four core values and a one-line definition of each:

• Champion the Mission: united in partnership with the community to create connection, which enables belonging.
• Be a Host: caring, open, and encouraging to everyone we work with.
• Embrace the Adventure: driven by open curiosity, hopeful resilience, and the belief that every person can grow.
• Be a Cereal Entrepreneur: determined and creative in transforming bold ambitions into reality.

Neither page says how those values are assessed in an interview. Everything below that line is candidate-reported.

The Loop, as Candidates Describe It

Third-party guides (TechPrep, Interview Kickstart, Exponent, Codemia and others) broadly agree on a shape, with some disagreement on counts:

1. Recruiter screen. Behavioral, with attention to why Airbnb and whether you know the product.
2. Technical screen. Reported as either a roughly 60-minute live session in a shared editor such as CoderPad, or an automated assessment on HackerRank or CodeSignal. Guides stress real, correct, test-passing code rather than pseudocode.
3. Onsite of roughly four to six rounds. Coding, a system design round, and, per some guides, a cross-functional conversation and a code review round.
4. Core values round. One or two behavioral conversations in which you're rated against the values.

One PracHub candidate write-up describes the onsite code review as a quiet round: the interviewer turned off their screen and had the candidate write review comments on their own, with little conversation. The same account mentions "design a group chat" as the system design prompt, and passing both the onsite and the core values round before team matching. It's a single undated account, so treat it as one data point about the format, not the standard script.

How the Values Round Likely Works

A Glassdoor reviewer says you are "literally rated on how well you fit each value." That's one reviewer, but it matches the shape of how guides advise preparing: a prepared story per value, with a concrete outcome, that you can adapt depending on the question.

What the official definitions tell you about the angle:

• Be a Host is about how you treated the people around you: a teammate you helped get unstuck, a stakeholder you made feel heard, a user you went out of your way for. "Caring, open, and encouraging" is a behavior description, so give behavior.
• Embrace the Adventure is about uncertainty and growth: a project with unclear requirements, something you failed at, what you did next. "Hopeful resilience" suggests the recovery matters as much as the failure.
• Be a Cereal Entrepreneur is about ambition turned into delivery. A story where you drove something forward with limited resources fits better than one where you were handed a clear plan.
• Champion the Mission is about connecting your work to the people it serves. Airbnb's mission language centers on belonging, so a story that shows you thinking about the end user beats one about pure technical elegance.

We're inferring these angles from the wording of the definitions. Airbnb hasn't published a rubric.

The structure that holds up for any of them is the one in our STAR method guide: a specific situation, what you personally did, and a result you can state. If you've prepared for Google's Googleyness round or Meta's behavioral loop, you can reuse the raw stories, but retell each one through the value you're being asked about rather than reciting it unchanged.

A Preparation Plan That Matches the Evidence

• Pick four stories, one per value, and write the outcome in one sentence each. If you can't state the result, the story isn't ready.
• Practice code you can run. The reported technical rounds expect working code that passes tests, so drill in an actual editor, timed, instead of sketching on paper.
• Rehearse reading code, not just writing it. For the reported code review round, practice reviewing an unfamiliar diff out loud: what's the bug, what's the risk, what would you ask the author.
• Prep one system design walk-through end to end. The group chat prompt is one reported example; the skill, scoping requirements and then talking through trade-offs, transfers.
• Spend an evening on the product. The FAQ doesn't require you to be a host or guest, but it explicitly encourages creating a profile and getting to know the site, and the mission and Be a Host questions get easier when you've seen how it works.

For the behavioral half, a spoken run-through beats rereading notes. A mock interview session lets you answer a values question aloud and hear where the story drifts away from what you did. If you're also working through other online assessments in the same cycle, our guides to the Amazon SDE online assessment and Capital One's CodeSignal process cover the unaided formats.

Is AI Allowed in Airbnb's Interviews?

We couldn't find a published Airbnb policy on AI tools in interviews. One candidate-reported profile on a prep site marks AI as allowed without naming a tool or round, and we wouldn't rely on that. Other companies have published or been widely reported on theirs (see our write-up of Google's stance), so the absence here is a real gap, not an oversight in our search.

The practical move is a logistics question to your recruiter: which tools, if any, are permitted in each technical round. Until you hear back, assume the coding and code review rounds are unaided.

FAQ

What are Airbnb's core values?

Champion the Mission, Be a Host, Embrace the Adventure, and Be a Cereal Entrepreneur, per the careers page. Third-party sites sometimes list others; go with Airbnb's wording.

Does Airbnb have a dedicated core values interview?

Candidates and prep guides say so, and one Glassdoor reviewer says you're rated per value. Airbnb's own FAQ doesn't describe individual rounds, so the structure is reported, not confirmed.

What does the Airbnb software engineer interview include?

Reported: recruiter screen, technical screen, then an onsite with coding, system design, a code review round and a core values round. Official: it may include a test, a video or an event, and you'll meet multiple team members.

Does Airbnb allow AI tools in coding interviews?

No published policy that we could find. Ask your recruiter, and prepare as if the technical rounds are unaided.

Do I need to have been an Airbnb host or guest?

No, per the careers FAQ, though they encourage getting to know the product.

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Author · Alex Chen. Career consultant and former tech recruiter. Spent 5 years on the hiring side before switching to help candidates instead. Writes about real interview dynamics, not textbook advice.