Company Knowledge & Culture Topics
Topics covering understanding a company's business model, product portfolio, strategy, culture, values, leadership, and organizational dynamics for interview preparation and market research.
Motivation for Microsoft and This Role
Explains a candidate's motivation for applying to Microsoft and for the specific role, including alignment with Microsoft's mission and values, appreciation of the company's products and impact, and a plan for contributing to the team and role.
Airbnb Product and Mission Knowledge
Evaluate familiarity with Airbnb product flows, features, and how technical and design decisions support the company mission. Candidates should be able to describe core workflows such as searching and filtering listings, booking and payment flow, host and guest experience management, messaging and reviews, common edge cases, and recent product features. Interviewers expect articulation of how product choices promote inclusive experiences and align with the mission to help people belong in different places.
Motivation for Airbnb and Role Understanding
Candidate's motivation for joining Airbnb and their understanding of the role, including alignment with Airbnb's culture, values, and product domain, to assess fit during the interview process.
Airbnb Product Knowledge and Questions
Prepare targeted research about Airbnb product features and engineering tradeoffs and craft a few thoughtful questions. Review core platform functionality such as search, booking flows, messaging, reviews and host tools, and read public information about recent engineering or product decisions. Prepare two to three specific questions that probe architecture choices, scaling challenges, or team processes, demonstrating curiosity and domain understanding rather than generic prompts.
Spotify Mission & Data Passion
Interest in Spotify's mission, product strategy, and data culture; demonstrates understanding of Spotify's business model and data-driven decision-making, and articulates how the candidate's motivations align with Spotify's values and data governance practices.
Airbnb Technology Context and Challenges
Domain knowledge about Airbnb specific technical and marketplace challenges. Topics include understanding the two sided marketplace model and the implications for trust and safety payments and fraud prevention global localization and availability across regions. Candidates should be able to tie domain level constraints to program priorities and explain how product and technical choices are influenced by the marketplace context.
Questions to Ask the Interviewer
Preparing thoughtful questions to evaluate the role and the team. Candidates should plan questions about team size and structure, current priorities and projects, key challenges and known risks, reporting lines and success metrics, expectations for the first six to twelve months, collaboration cadence, and how decisions are made. Well chosen questions demonstrate curiosity, help the candidate assess fit, and show genuine interest in the work and stakeholders they would partner with.