Why does Airbnb feel unusually hard to even get an interview at?

Airbnb is one of those companies where I keep seeing strong candidates say the same thing:

They’re not failing the interview.

They can’t even get the interview.

People with big-tech backgrounds, solid YOE, relevant experience, and sometimes even referrals still seem to get rejected at the resume stage.

That makes me curious what Airbnb is actually filtering for before the interview loop.

A few possibilities:

• Much lower hiring volume than companies like Meta / Amazon / Google
• Very team-specific hiring rather than broad SWE hiring
• Referrals matter less than people think
• Recruiters heavily optimize for exact domain / stack fit
• Strong preference for certain company backgrounds or product experience
• Open roles stay posted even when the realistic hiring funnel is already narrow
• Airbnb simply gets an absurd number of qualified applicants

The interesting part is that once you do get into the loop, the interview itself at least becomes something you can prepare for.

But resume screening feels much more opaque.

For people who have recently applied to Airbnb:

Did you get an interview? What was your background?

And for anyone who got rejected with a strong resume, what do you think was missing?

Would especially love to hear from people who got interviews through cold applications vs referrals.

I also started a longer-running thread here to collect Airbnb application / interview data points by role, level, background, and referral status: forum link