I verbally accepted the offer and I am waiting to hear back from the recruiter. It’s been almost 5 months. Sadly, bias runs deep in the hiring process which is extremely disappointing coming from a company that promotes acceptance and hospitality. The company seems to take you much more seriously if you have a competing offer from Google or Facebook, otherwise, you’re less interesting to them. Even though you nailed their +8 interviews. At the end of the day, the story of how one of their employees (look it up) negotiated his offer with them is a sad reflection of reality. It’s all in the hands of the recruiters – the managers and engineers you meet don’t matter. In my case, my recruiter handled the situation extremely poorly. He showed 0 interest in trying to close. I turned down other compelling offers in the process of accepting theirs (which I wasn’t 100% convinced with but I really liked the mission of the company) but for reasons only the recruiter knows, that was the last time I heard back from them. Almost every company I had interviewed with in the past followed up with a survey in order to make their process better. Not Airbnb though! They didn’t provide me with a way to express how uncomfortable and unwelcome the process made me feel and so I decided to write this post for future candidates. To future candidates: • If you have other offers, make sure to discuss them with the recruiter as soon as you can. • Manage the process – if the recruiter doesn’t give you a deadline, specify one. It’ll be used against you otherwise. To Airbnb recruiting team: • Be a host – empathize with the candidates, understand where they’re coming from. The culture of inclusion and hospitably starts with you. • Simplify – don’t trick the candidates. Set clear deadlines if you really care about the timelines, otherwise, don’t timelines against the candidates. • Listen from the candidates – situations like this happen all the time. Sometimes, it’s the candidates fault and sometimes it’s the recruiters fault. Listen to both sides.