Airbnb Product Manager Mock Interview: Increase Airbnb Bookings

[@tryexponent]

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[@elyayaghubyan3385]

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[@elyayaghubyan3385]

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[@elyayaghubyan3385]

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[@elyayaghubyan3385]

Q

[@nsubugakasozi7101]

Its nice to see that even real world product managers are never sure of their answers when interviewing

[@GregXu]

No one can be sure without seeing actual data.

[@annxiao7721]

I don’t think he was unsure, he was very skillful in pushing his agenda and getting buy in in a respectful and diplomatic way. It’s an extremely important skill for a pm.

[@chumleyk]

@@GregXu even actual data is not airtight truth most of the time. Intuition, experience, and hypothesis process rationale help to take positive action to then iterate. No one is writing scientific white papers as PM on this stuff even at the largest tech companies

[@missbae_]

Nice to see? That’s NOT good. If you sound unsure of your own ideas why in the word would I hire you?

[@mmscorpio]

Love this interview. interviewer is just blunt and straight forward, which is how normally it is. I like how the interviewee asked these questions and in parellel was thinking about the solutions.

[@rosemo2992]

I could feel that tension during the halfway then I was picturing myself as part of this. This is definitely a good study material as you can see how a PM structures the strategy and approaches down

[@LWarrenF]

Remember to use the word ‘awesome’ in your PM interview and you’ll do just fine.

[@HUSSEINHUSSEINAHMED]

lol

[@compound26]

This was a great strategy question, here are some of the things I really liked from Phil's answers: 1. Revisiting the core mission and ethos of Airbnb before arriving at a North-Star metric or a solution. Thus keeping things in perspective. 2. Being flexible and open to feedback that the north star metric he arrived at might not be accurate. ( @06:48 Going from Annual bookings per user per year to the Number of nights per user per year) 3. Stating the different kinds of user segmentation and why he chose to work with Leisure and low-intent travelers. (This is important as it shows that there might be instances on the job where one has to work within certain constraints, here it was not having access to the data team.) 4. Potential Features: Scoping further might give the answer to the jobs-to-be-done framework. 5. A simple go-to-market strategy that targets inactive users: Teasing the idea of the Explore/Browsing section of the application, measuring the engagement of the newsletter, and so on.

[@tryexponent]

Hey SatishKumar-ps1cy! So great to hear your takeaways!

[@amarkanday]

Started off well, really liked that he explained his thought process with steps. I think there was a miss in not spending enough time on the conversion funnel (Acquire, Engage, Monetize), and the user journey. Moderator did a good job with challenging assumptions and the PM was calm and composed.

[@ravigahlla]

This is a great interview example, very relatable reasoning by the Product Manager, as someone who has practiced mock interviews a lot

[@jay6ix705]

This guy's good. I like his constructive and highly engaging way to comminucate.

[@whattimeisitnow124]

This is how I would approach this in summary: 1. Define the business outcomes: increase return customers, increase net new customers, more nights booked in the same booking for example 2. Pick one of the above: Let's say increase return customers 3. Now map out the opportunity space in the shape of problems (this could be done by user segment): Not having enough days off in a year, too expensive, poor past experience, too hard to book, not enough options or any other problem that we are able to extract from existing data such as user reviews. 4. Assess the problem space with data: Gather data from existing sources. What patterns do we see in existing customers that constantly rebook vs others. What kind of patterns are we seeing. For each of the problems above what kind of evidence can we gather from the data above to see which ones to prioritize for testing. 5. Based on the analysis above you produce a few tests. For example if the problem of not enough days off is big enough generally a hypothesis could be do introduce workation options. One experiment could be to tag locations that are suitable for workation such as high speed net, dual monitor and desk, chair etc. Near amenities (tag as Workation certified). Do A/B test to see if locations with this tag have higher booking or not in a few weeks.

[@tryexponent]

Woah! Thanks for sharing your approach 💪

[@prakashpoudele]

Loved your approach! thanks for sharing

[@harshapappala6199]

Awesome solution and aproach!

[@kranthikumar8415]

AirBnB can increase bookings by many ways like : Are we looking to increase bookings by expansion to new cities? Are we looking for new users? Are we looking for repeat users? Are we looking for churned users? Are we looking to double tap on cart abandoned users? Probably the last user segment will give some quick wins for getting more bookings, as its difficult to get users on ToFu and then get them to complete funnel

[@natashasaungweme1519]

This is super awesome.. nice way to create different avenues

[@sandeepveeramani]

@@AB-jp2eb Top of the Funnel... the initial stage where potential customers become aware of a product or service.

[@sionchoimariscal3004]

Loved how poised the interviewee was throughout and how neatly he structured every step of his thought process. 16:30 - especially liked the notion of changing the interaction model for low intent travelers. It reminded me of how I recently visited Barcelona and, wanting to venture off the beaten path and out of the city for a few days, used Airbnb to discover beautiful homes / experiences along Costa Brava without a specific city in mind. Was initially undecided if I would even do this (low intent) and even if i did, undecided between hotel vs Airbnb (medium intent?), but I ultimately curated my trip around the Airbnb I found in a small beach town - one that I wouldn’t have known to search for had I not found the listing. But not everyone gets as creative as me :P so bringing that kind of travel discovery and inspiration more front and center to increase engagement with leisure travelers is a fun idea. Thanks for sharing this great interview!

[@pgcorpo]

This actually was all over the place.. Also, the interviewee changed his approach every time he was pushed by the interviewer.

[@apurvkumaragrawal]

Agreed. The only outcome till 20:00 is that he has segmented the users into high intent and low intent. That’s it. 😢

[@jatinnagpal6089]

Great interview. Well very structured approach by Phil and good feedback at the end from Kevin. Thanks Team Exponent!

[@tryexponent]

You are most welcome, Jatin!

[@harshilguptaa]

The most honest interview ever seen :)

[@davidefiumano9256]

Great mock! I would have asked since the beginning the reason why they want to increase bookings, because the assumption of nights per user per year can be tricky as the booking value is also the metric to look at. And as you want to increase nights per user I would have chosen a target user who usually book longer stays like remote workers or family/group accommodations. I would have suggested to introduce a loyalty program to encourage these targets to book longer stays.

[@shivamanand6112]

true. #days is part of the equation, esp evident given they introduced features related to long stays

[@17teacmrocks]

I jumped to this from eng sys design interviews in a playlist so as I was working on something and listening, I thought, "man he's spending so much time talking about managerial details". Then I looked at this screen and saw "product manager". Ok, that makes sense.

[@shivalishinde4327]

User expansion. Majority of the users are concerned of the safety in apartments/bungalows. It would be good to have conversations enabled on the airbnb app on the reviews posted by previous customers. This increases user engagement with the app. This user induced conversation acts as hook to visit the app.

[@manikandan474]

Absolutely loved the Pinterest idea for travel and bookings.

[@missbae_]

This video reassures me that my knack for getting to the point will serve me will…this was wayyyy too draw out. I promise the recruiter would’ve zoned out in the first 7 minutes lol

[@alexeyhimself]

I am surprised that a "direct talk to the customers" was never an option for the interviewee. No data analytics too. Even at the end when I heard some chance on contacting people I've heard only a marketing email to reach the target group. But I'd wanted to have an in person access to those who didn't made or didn't finish their bookings to talk to some of them (30-60 customers should be fine to start with) to find out the reasons why they didn't finish their bookings -- and improve on that, while continue to stay in a contact with those customers to validate our solutions we'll iteratively bring to test how good we solve their problem.

[@shivalishinde4327]

Market penetration should have been considered. If the market is captured by Airbnb in a particular region is high then we can look for repeat customers.

[@suryanshjaiswal313]

What do you think about the segment of users - Bagpackers as they are always looking to travel and travel solo hence prefer to stay in hostel. What if airbnb allows the functionality to book one room bed/couch and then combine multiple booking to reach the price of the property for the night. This will help to get a complete new high frequency customer on Airbnb.

[@benedictgodwin9351]

consider the effort of grouping travellers together in one apartment for a night.. that's a lot of risk.

[@shivalishinde4327]

Since there are travel seasonal plateaus. The metric considered won't have much effect on the revenue. Number of nights hotel booked per year would be a good starting point.

[@MenelikLewis]

Excellent interview - great back and forth dialogue

[@borahm]

That was such a good interview.

[@dlinder89]

When the interviewer pressed Phil to define "low intent travelers," I think that could have been an opportunity for Phil to list out some metrics that could be interpreted as proxies to measure intent. I think Phil explained the low intent persona well, but I think the interviewer was getting at that intent is not easily seen, and therefore hard to measure. Phil could have taken a step back and thought "how do I see low intent travelers on Airbnb?" and "how might I gauge low intent travelers that are searching off-platform, eg in the Expedias and Kayaks?" In working through the strategy, Phil nailed the north star metric. But I'd be impressed if he was able to cover secondary metrics like (1) add to wishlist quantity, (2) wishlist-to-booking conversion rates, (3) site visits from non-logged in users, (4) CTR on new account signup button, and (5) successful signup conversion rate from new visits. Those could have been very helpful for Phil to hammer his point of measuring booking while monitoring how the new changes on the Wishlist page could influence low intent engagement.

[@namanbhayani1016]

Really nice framework on how to handle such Questions. Thanks!

[@riyabhatia631]

User expansion / Retaining customers Majority of the time the travellers are couples and their basic first set of requirements is safety. Secure place and with less interference. Making sure they are secure and not being sneaked peaked into so yup listings have a "couple friendly tag" or something that easily helps in retaining. Also female travellers look for security n safety , so some tag or verification of that property and the owner and verifying reviews something that way

[@DrDre9998282]

Is there any strategy to come up with ideas on the spot like that? I'd be stuttering a lot if I was asked to a problem like that. Even with 1-2 minutes time for structuring your ideas, that's still a very short time to come up with a detailed solution like that.

[@KKB007]

Lean Six Sigma DMAIC process model fits well with product improvement: define the issue, measure the current state, analyse the issues/opportunities, improve (Inc. Small scale MVP testing) and control I.e., observe metrics and maintain

[@KKB007]

The structure will help shape ideation

[@huichen3556]

keep reading

[@waattzup]

Hey Andre,read tech blogs and solve as many questions as you can.This will eventually help you in getting good at product sense!!

[@skele5678]

@@waattzup do you have suggestions for the Tech blogs?

[@santoshtalreja9154]

Helpful content. Would love to watch more

[@morganlilly4527]

How do people interview so well like this? I know this is a mock interview but I would have absolutely CRUMBLED under this question. Unfortunately I also deal with social anxiety and panic attacks. I just can't see a world where I could get a PM job if this is the kind of people I am competing with :/ major kudos/mad respect to him but wow, this is just way beyond what I could do hah.

[@tryexponent]

Hey morganlilly4527! It's normal to be nervous in an interview if we don't get enough exposure or practice to these kind of questions. By being aware of what the interviewer is looking for in an ideal candidate, the proper way to tackle the question, and some practice sessions in the form of mock interviews, you'll slowly but surely get to this level 💪! If you are interested, we have some great resources for interview prep on our website: www.tryexponent.com. You can even find other aspiring PMs to practice your interviews with in our peer mock service (www.tryexponent.com/practice ). Believe you can and you're halfway there!

[@parthdesai9751]

In a lot of mock interview videos, the person being interviewed knows the full question or part of the question prior so they have some insights into what they will say. Not saying that is what happened here, but something to keep in mind before comparing to these situations! The best thing to get from videos like this, is what sorts of clarifying questions to ask, and what structure to follow. No one is realistically expecting an insanely good answer to such vast problems within 45 minutes! They just want to understand how you think and if your solution could potentially work (don't just give something insanely random ofc)

[@clairephilip3259]

I was disappointed in booking with airbnb as they do not refund cancellation even if it is thyw host fault. My issues were - I booked and paid but the hosts emailed me that they need a vaccine pass upon check which they did not put on their listing. They only refund me very little amount of the total amount I paid. I hope they will address this concern. It happened to me twice now and it puts me off booking on airbnb.

[@xDAZZE]

7:06 - Why is the annual bookings per user to top line metric? What if people just travel less? Because this way, if there are a lot of new users trying out Airbnb for the first time, this could actually lead to a decrease since there could be a lot of new users with 1 or 2 bookings only, but it's not necessarily a bad thing that a bunch of new users sign up. So why not just use "total bookings", which could be further broken down by "bookings by veteran users" vs "bookings by new users"..? 7:53 - Looks like he switched. I am making these comments as I go along the video... I'll still leave the top comment up there though for others who might have wondered the same...

[@jashyardjohnson8194]

This was great and I really appreciate this video!

[@athensf]

This is a very odd way of approaching this question. The question strikes me as an analytical question (start with $ per booking x # of bookings). But the interviewee approached it like a product feature question (Company goals, Success. metric, user JTBD, Tradeoffs etc.)

[@danishiqbal2047]

When I travel, I am not going to see the space that I am booking, I am interested in the landmarks and sights of the country/city that I am planning to visit this is why I am going to travel in the first place. If I am a low intent traveler, showing me a story or more about the booking space is not going to convert me into a high intent traveler. And If I have any intention to visit Paris, I will not go to Airbnb, I will go to Google Images or KZbin to see places to visit, then I will search how to get the Visa, Ticket price, etc. Once I have made up my mind about places to visit then I will start searching for spaces depending on my plan. The interviewee assumes that Airbnb is sort of the first place a low intent traveler will visit. That's just my thought process, I may be wrong, just thinking.

[@dollaya8893]

This is very helpful. Thank you so much.

[@aok1425]

Is it OK for the interviewee to revise the north star metric in the question as he did here? My natural inclination to hearing that Bookings is the metric to move is to focus on that instead of thinking about other possible better metrics. I'd think that Bookings was chosen instead of Nights Booked on purpose.

[@frodjim]

Very helpful!

[@do_it_nadia_rus]

Can you post criteria a recruiter/ hiring manager is using when assessing a PM at a mock?

[@tryexponent]

Hey Nadia! We have rubrics for all types of PM interview questions e.g. estimation, analytical, execution & product design in our Exponent PM course. Check it out here: www.tryexponent.com/courses/pm

[@nat.serrano]

Basically just ask a bunch of questions at the beginning to get some time to think, then bullshit for a while so you can have more time to think and then provide the response at 20:39

[@devonchen4022]

This is so good!!!

[@reshuvarshney3708]

the delivery doesn't come smoothly for the viewer to track and learn

[@raiaish17]

What metrics is the interviewee talking about ?

[@leroyhalim9290]

great video

[@rahul-sn3gr]

Nice

[@vaishnaviraghav852]

Ahh this mock interview is so confusing. Idk how I have better ideas!

[@suechoi6292]

very good！

[@luvsmearer]

It would be interesting to see an interview where the interviewee is asked to design a shopping aisle for a wheel chair bound person.

[@greanbean001]

I have no clue about product management. My gut feel to tackle this challenge is... #1, I'd clarify what made "increase booking" a priority? ==> drivers #2, I'd delve into the drivers to identify the "problems" if any #3, I'd define the primary metric (e.g. DailyBooking#) and break it down to the secondary metrics (that can be worked on). #4, based on #2 and #3, I'd propose to focus on improving the secondary metrics to increase primary metric of #booking. #5, I'd start with the metric that is easy to move, and creates a material impact if successful #6, I'd push out the change, collect the data, measure the metrics to see if it helps #7, I'd then keep iterating until I reach the target Keen to hear your thoughts on this

[@tryexponent]

Hi HL. That's a really solid "gut feel" approach you have there 😎. I definitely wouldn't say you have "no clue" about product management 😄

[@greanbean001]

​@@tryexponent Thanks for the response! I'm not in PM but keen to learn, and break into this field, I had a second thought about this challenge. Key questions to be answered: Q1 - What made us decide to prioritise "increase booking" over other issues or initiatives (e.g. bug fixings, planned experiments etc). Is it because we need to make the number look great to get investor's money? Or is it because there has been a steady decline over the past x weeks? What is the underlying problem we're solving? The more fundamental we break it down to, the more options we have to address it. Q2 - What 's the ultimate goal are we aiming to achieve? How well is it aligned with the product vision/strategy/roadmap? Q3 - How do we define success and what metrics can we use to measure it? Q4 - What benefits in $ can we achieve if it becomes a wild success? How much do we need to invest? How long is the payback period? Q5 - what alternatives have we considered other than increase booking to achieve the ultimate goal? Q6 - What benefits will this initiative prevent us from achieving? Q7 - what are the risks we're running into? Q8 - what if we don't or defer it? What's your thought on this?

[@NguyenBinh-jt6cr]

The answer from the interviewee seems vague and without careful thoughts given the time for taking notes and thinking.

[@aakriti360]

Well this is a very confusing mock interview. The interviewer should have made the intent clear in the beginning that he wants to convert Air BnB from ad hoc site to a destination.

[@DublinDapper]

It was a very poor answer and the idea was poor

[@eugenemalinin]

12:13 dude sips on some soda and after just a second washes it down with a tea 😀 someone's really thirsty huh?

[@chumleyk]

I would have asked him to focus on host instead of guest so he can show his process of uncovering things that he is less personally familiar with.

[@YouAreDifferent]

I feel I will be rejected in 10 min with such an interview performance

[@missbae_]

You would! This was not good! He deconstructed the entire company to answer a 5 minute question

[@peterlegend]

I felt the customer pain points for the high intent could also apply to low intent lol

[@CS-om8pq]

I'm not saying it's wrong but this was super cringey to watch on the outside. I realized I sound like this when I'm interviewing even down to using some of same exact phrases and mannerisms. It's sad how corporate america really values turning us into robots.

[@another_auntie]

The intent of the interview was very blur at the beginning with little focus and guidance to the interviewee. Feel bad for him 😂🤣

[@g.aayushkumar1513]

Overall, its a very confusing interview.

[@riz_owl]

Started off well and then got boring and less engaging. He needs to be a little more straightforward.

[@sudididnotdache]

。。。就这？？ 那我找着工作没问题- -。。。

[@francisd7081]

Starting to wonder if the interviewer has arms

[@LOVEONLYLOVEable]

Bc ads

[@t3zsvids]

bruh