What Eric Learned From His Failed Airbnb Interview

0:00All right, so we're going to talk about how I failed at my Airbnb interview and why the failure was actually a blessing in disguise and why it wasn't actually a failure in my humble opinion. So Neil in this episode, this one's going to be easy for him. He can actually interview me here. And I want to share some backstory on this one. So Neil had actually, this was a long time ago. He had asked me because he knew the, I believe it was the VP of marketing at Airbnb and they needed an SEO at the time. So I was probably maybe 25 years old or so, 26 years old. And Neil's like, Hey, like, you know, there's this Airbnb company and they're growing really quick.

0:37You know, it might be interesting for you to interview over there. And at the time I was still working full-time at a company. And so I was like, oh, it looks really cool. And I think they're valued at maybe$5 billion at the time or a billion. I might be off a little bit. Neil, do you remember what the valuation was? I don't. Okay. So basically what had happened was I ended up talking to the VP of marketing and the interview goes really well. And so the next step of the interview was I had to talk to someone at Facebook who was their advisor. And lo and behold, it is actually a guy that still works there.

1:10His name is Alex Schultz. and I think for all intents and purposes, he's their CMO now. And he interviews me. I get this call from Apollo Alto number in the morning and he just grills me, right? He's like not interested in small talk, not interested. He's just like, you know, here to grill me and that's it, right? And there's no knock on the guy. You know, he's successful. You know, congrats to him. So I want to pause for a second. Neil, do you have any questions before I continue? No, no, keep going. I never heard this story, so I'm interested in myself. Okay. Okay. So this might jog your memory, but so he interviews me and he's like, what's the most important thing you would do for the website right now?

1:47Like what's the biggest opportunity? And I was prepared for that question. And I had noticed that there was, at the time, there were certain elements on their website that were uncrawlable. And this was for all their major product pages. I think at the time, Ajax wasn't crawlable. And this was when I was really deep in SEO. And I was like, guys, like your stuff isn't crawlable. Like a lot of your blocks of content are basically going to waste right now. And so he basically paused for a moment and that was it. He basically was like, no, the right answer is make a bunch of landing pages, like programmatic SEO.

2:20And I knew that was a thing, but I thought an easier lift would have been to just fix that part. And I stood my ground and he asked me if I wanted to change my mind. I said no. And that was that. And so I ended up not getting the job there. And one thing led to another. And I'm glad that I didn't get the job. Otherwise, I wouldn't have the opportunity to do what I'm doing now. So that's the high level. I want to also communicate. I want to do communicate that Alex Schultz, he is successful in his own right. Obviously, he's done really well with Facebook, but he also has a drink recipe website as well that gets good traffic.

2:55But still to this day, 11 years later, 12 years later, I still stand my ground because that was an easier change. So those are a couple lessons. There's also no right or wrong answer in which an ideal world in SEO, it's if you fast forward to today, you kind of have to do everything to do well. It was quite a bit different years and years ago, let's say 10 plus years ago. But now it's, it's if you're not doing every little thing, you're not going to win. So whether it's creating those landing pages or solving the Ajax issue or fixing duplicate titles or whatever it may be, you kind of have to do everything.

3:29And if your whole site isn't buttoned up, you're just not going to do as well these days. And I don't have access to the data I used to. We used to also be the consultant to Airbnb and do their SEO back then as well. But when you think about it is there's not necessarily one is right or wrong. It's more so there's many ways to skin a cat and you got to kind of do all of it to do well. Yeah. So also like I appreciate and respect where he's coming from, Alex, with that interview question. So he really targeted in on one. But when you're talking to someone, you can't just base it on one question.

4:02Had we had a deeper conversation on, hey, like, tell me why you think that? Or why are you holding your ground that way? Tell me how you're thinking about it. We would have had a deeper conversation. And to Neil's point, oftentimes, someone might disagree with you or there might be a disagreement, but it's interesting to see them. You respect them more for standing their ground. And you also respect them more to understand how they think. And that's ultimately what's important for a company. You want to have a diverse group of thinkers, a diverse group of critical thinkers. And that's what it is.

4:31So ultimately, I think it was a blessing in disguise. I wouldn't have had moved on to the opportunities that I got to move on to. And Airbnb is what it is. He's done well for himself. And I don't have any regrets at all. And those are a couple lessons. So that's what it is. Anything else, Neil? If you ever go through an interview and someone disagrees with you, I believe someone who hires people, and this is just my thoughts, it doesn't mean everyone else believes this way, but I believe it's better to actually stand your ground. If you flip-flop too much, it shows that you don't have a backbone.

5:03I probably wouldn't hire myself. That's just me. Yeah, they're going to get run over in an organization. So you want people that, again, diverse thoughts, but you also want people that can communicate and you want people that can speak up because ultimately you want an organization that is okay with direct feedback. And the communication cycles, the feedback cycles, the loops move a lot faster. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, resubscribe. Neil's doing this from Brazil right now. I'm doing this from Turkey. So apologies for any issues that you might have spotted. And yeah, we'll see you later.