Champion the Mission is the first of Airbnb's core values, and Airbnb takes values screening more literally than most companies: candidates typically face dedicated core-values interviews conducted by trained employees from outside the hiring team, with a real veto. The mission being championed is 'create a world where anyone can belong anywhere' - and the company's history gives it teeth. Airbnb's product is strangers trusting each other enough to share a home, so belonging isn't marketing garnish; it's the load-bearing mechanism. The company has repeatedly paid for the value in public: building Open Homes / Airbnb.org to house refugees and disaster evacuees, running anti-discrimination work (Project Lighthouse, instant-book changes, the community commitment that cost it hosts who refused to sign) even when the fixes reduced booking friction metrics. Interviewers are trained to distinguish mission belief from mission performance. What lands is operational: a time you traded a measurable business win for user trust or inclusion, a decision where you asked 'who does this exclude?' and changed course, evidence you understand that trust and belonging are engineering problems (verification, reviews, safety flows, accessibility) with real tradeoffs. What fails is aspiration without cost - 'I'm passionate about connecting people' with no story where the passion was expensive. Interviewers also probe fit honestly: championing this mission means caring about hosts and guests as people whose homes and safety are on the line, and candidates who reduce the product to 'a booking marketplace' in their language reveal they'd optimize exactly the thing the mission exists to constrain.