I went in thinking this was a softball and kind of rambled through a story without anchoring it to any real numbers.
Use a STAR-based story where you identified a decision that needed to change, built a coalition through data-driven persuasion and empathy for each stakeholder's incentives, and drove alignment without formal authority. Emphasize how you tailored your communication to different audiences and the measurable outcome that resulted.
Pro tip: Show that you understood each stakeholder's underlying incentives and concerns before proposing your solution—influence at Airbnb comes from framing your recommendation in terms of what matters to them (guest experience, host trust, revenue, or operational efficiency).
Briefly describe the cross-functional decision (e.g., metric definition, experiment design, model rollout) and why it mattered, naming the stakeholders involved and your role without direct authority.
Explain how you uncovered each stakeholder's concerns and motivations—through 1:1 conversations, listening, and mapping where interests diverged—so you could address the real blockers.
Describe how you used data, prototypes, or small experiments to make your recommendation concrete and credible, while framing benefits in terms of each stakeholder's goals.
Show how you socialized the idea, incorporated feedback, and created a shared decision-making process (e.g., working sessions, pre-reads, pilot results) that led to consensus.
State the decision that was made, the measurable impact (e.g., improved metric, saved time, better model performance), and what you learned about influence without authority.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.