If you’ve ever searched for a great deal on a flight or hotel room, you’ve probably come across Expedia. Their portfolio of travel-related brands — including Hotels.com, Vrbo, Travelocity, and Orbitz — covers everything from airfare to rental cars to last-minute lodging. That means Product Managers at Expedia have the opportunity to shape memorable moments for the company’s users, such as family vacations, long-awaited getaways, and important business trips.
Interested in becoming a product team member for this well-known online travel company?
Company Overview
Expedia Group is an online travel agency that provides a number of products and services around accommodations, airline tickets, car rentals, vacation packages, and corporate travel. Expedia is based out of the United States but operates around the globe through various partnerships and investments, with travel sites in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Asia.
Back in 1996, Microsoft debuted one of the web’s first travel sites: Microsoft Expedia Travel Services. The name was a combination of “speed” and “exploration,” and the service quickly took off. Just three years later, Microsoft spun Expedia off as its own publicly-traded company. In 2003, IAC/InterActiveCorp acquired Expedia and several other emerging companies in the travel space, including Hotels.com, Hotwire, Tripadvisor, and Egencia Corporate Travel. Two years later, Expedia was spun off again, this time as Expedia Inc. the umbrella brand of IAC’s travel-related properties. On August 9, 2005, Expedia Inc. went public on the NASDAQ.
In 2018, Expedia Inc. rebranded to Expedia Group. Today, the company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and helmed by CEO Peter Kern. The company employs more than 25,000 people worldwide and earned revenues of over $5 billion in 2020. Encompassing more than 200 travel sites in 70 countries and offering nearly 3 million properties for users to choose from, Expedia remains a major force in the global travel market.
Product Culture at Expedia
Expedia’s product offerings span just about every aspect of the vacation/travel planning and booking experience. Several of their online platforms allow users to search and select a variety of services all in one place. These sites are Expedia, Travelocity, Hotwire, Orbitz, Trivago, and CheapTickets.com. Expedia also has Europe- and Australia-focused full-service travel agency sites: ebookers and Wotif, respectively.
On the accommodations-only side, Expedia offers a few separate products. One is Hotels.com, which lets travelers browse and book hotel rooms, resorts, bed and breakfasts, motels, condos, and more. Another is Vrbo, which focuses on vacation rentals for large groups, such as beach houses, cabins, full apartments, etc.
The company’s Egencia brand is aimed at business travelers. Through their TAAP (Travel Agent Affiliate Program) offering, Expedia also partners with “traditional” offline travel agencies to help individuals and companies plan their trips. Additional travel-focused products are ExpediaCruises and CarRentals.com.
Expedia Group also provides products and services for marketers and advertisers. These include display ads, sponsored listings, co-op campaigns, and creative partnerships, along with analytics and reporting solutions.
Overall Company Culture
Expedia’s mission is “to power global travel for everyone, everywhere.” To support that goal, the company has established five core values:
- Choose Fearlessly: Own your own decisions. Make mistakes. Move on. Begin again.
- Force Simplicity: Drive clarity and create momentum. Focus on impactful work.
- Include Consciously: Bring people in. Drive success for everyone around you. Seek out diverse ideas to unlock better outcomes for our travelers and our company.
- Trust Each Other: We challenge each other and then place our trust in each other to deliver.
- Go Get What’s Next: We’re always hungry for a better future and we have big dreams – for ourselves, for the company, and for the possibilities opened up by travel.
Expedia employees should be results-driven, trustworthy, hardworking, and accountable. In return, they receive a number of perks and benefits, such as leisure travel reimbursement, apprenticeship and professional development programs, tuition assistance, paid parental leave, stock options, volunteer time off, gym memberships, and charitable gift matching. The company is also committed to diversity and inclusion and corporate philanthropy.
Product Team Culture
According to the Expedia Group Careers site, Product Managers at the company “manage a product’s full lifecycle,” which means everything from planning to launch to tracking. Expect to work with multiple teams, especially design and engineering.
How to Get a Product Manager Job at Expedia
At Product Gym, we apply a simple four-step framework to landing the Product Manager job you’re looking for. With this structure and the support of the PG community, both aspiring and veteran PMs have increased the number of calls they receive for interviews. The process also leads to more of those interviews being converted into offers.
Here’s how the magic works:
1. Optimize
From the best techniques for writing a cover letter to building an attractive Product Manager resume, the first step is to boost your credibility and professional branding. To get the offer from Expedia, you’ll need:
- A resume designed to beat the ATS
- A cover letter that shows your culture fit
- An optimized LinkedIn profile that aligns with the above
- A 30-second personal pitch that sells you as the best possible candidate
At Product Gym, we provide branding workshops, resume reviews, and the tools you need to take your professional branding to the next level.
2. Apply
Product Gym members apply for 20+ Product Manager jobs weekly, and often average 9+ interviews in any given week. But how’s that going to help you get the job at Expedia? Simple: by perfecting your application strategy and interview approach through practice and experience, you’ll build the confidence and expertise you need to wow the recruiter and interviewers at your dream company when the time comes.
Of course, our tried and tested application framework is paired with tools, tips, and interview support that all come together to form a job-hunting strategy that really works.
3. Convert
Once you’ve lined up your interviews, it’s time to zero in on converting those round ones into round twos, and so on, all the way to the Expedia Product Manager job offer. It’s no secret that we focus on the Product Manager interview process here at Product Gym: we’re there to help our members learn how to ace every step and every question — including behavioral questions, technical questions, case studies, salary negotiation, and more.
4. Learn
When should you start building your product management skillset? Before you apply? When you’re on the job? Honestly, transitioning into product management can be a long journey. We encourage Product Managers (whether you’re a first-timer or an industry vet) to start learning at the beginning and continue on past the finish line.
You likely already have skills that translate well into a Product Manager role: keep sharpening them, and find the gaps where you can learn, grow, and practice new skills to become a better Product Manager every day.
We want to make sure our members show up skilled and prepared for their interviews and their first day on the job, which is why we offer 20+ technical and business courses taught by industry experts.
What Does a Typical Expedia Product Manager Job Posting Look Like?
Expedia’s Product Manager job postings start with a quick overview of the role and some basic information about the specific product area(s) the successful candidate will be working on. Next comes a “What You Will Do” section, which outlines the key responsibilities of the position. That’s followed by a “Who You Are” section, which lists the qualifications the candidate should have and the prerequisites for the job. In general, Expedia Product Managers should possess the following:
- At least a year of product management experience, with 5+ years being required for some roles
- Strong quantitative and analytical skills
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills
- A clear record of quantifiable business impacts
- The ability to work in a fast-paced and constantly changing environment
- Familiarity with user research and A/B testing
- A sense of humor
The job listing ends with an “About Expedia Group” section, which is essentially a boilerplate description of the company’s mission, products, and brands.
While salary is generally not listed in the job description, Glassdoor puts Expedia’s average Product Manager salary at $123K annually. Senior PMs can expect to earn about $159K per year.
How Do You Get an Interview at Expedia?
Begin by searching through Expedia’s current job openings to find the role(s) that match your expertise, experience, skills, and professional goals. Once you’ve identified one (or more!) that seems promising, the next step is to create a standout application — and that starts with an excellent resume.
1. Write a Strong Product Manager Resume
The Expedia Hiring Manager will probably look at your resume first. Be sure to highlight your relevant job experience and your Product Manager skill set, along with any qualifications involving the responsibilities and tasks listed in the job opening. If you can demonstrate previous quantitative results around those parts of the position, definitely do so.
Before polishing up your resume, check out our free webinar on resume writing, which guides you through the process of crafting a resume that you can use for multiple Product Manager roles.
2. Position Yourself as a Top-Tier Hire
Next, you should demonstrate your product management skills by writing a pitch that outlines the Product Manager position’s key responsibilities. You’ll need your personal elevator pitch polished and ready for the interview process, where you’ll use it to showcase your history and experience.
3. Apply!
Now it’s time to submit your application. But don’t stop there — if you know any employees at Expedia, see if they’d be willing to give you a referral. According to Glassdoor, 13% of interviewees got their foot in the door through an employee referral. Also, our step-by-step recruiter networking methodology can help you get that first interview.
What Is the Interview Process and Timeline?
Expedia’s Product Manager hiring process typically follows these steps:
- Introductory call with the Hiring Manager
- Technical and behavioral round with team members and stakeholders
- The offer
The process generally takes between one and two months from end-to-end. According to Glassdoor, 56% of interviewees had a positive experience, and the average difficulty was rated a 2.9 out of 5.
How to Win the Introductory Call With the Hiring Manager
During the first round, your goal is to clearly show that you’re qualified enough to move on to the next stage. According to Glassdoor, you should be ready to answer the following questions during this initial conversation:
- What is a product you admire and why?
- Tell me about yourself.
- What do you see as the role of the Product Manager within a team?
- What is product management?
- How do you manage stakeholders?
- How do you ensure projects are delivered on time?
- How do you manage competing priorities?
- Why do you want to work at Expedia?
- Tell us about a time you influenced a group to do something differently.
- Tell me about a favorite project you have implemented and how you measured its success.
- What’s the most innovative thing you’ve ever done?
- Your product doesn’t meet the customer’s pain points. What do you do about this?
- Tell me a time when you had to make a decision but there was no data to support it.
- How do you include the customer in the product development or improvement process?
- Tell me a time when you used KPIs to make a decision.
- Tell me about a product you worked on.
- Tell me how you handled a conflict.
If you impress the Hiring Manager, you’ll be asked to move on to the technical round with additional members of the team.
How to Win the Technical Round With the Hiring Manager and Team Stakeholders
During this round, you’ll meet with several members of the product and product-adjacent teams at Expedia. According to Glassdoor responses, you may be asked to complete anywhere from four to six one-on-one conversations, plus a potential panel. Here are some of the questions you should be ready to answer:
- How would you improve TripAdvisor?
- Being a hotel, travel and experience company, what data points will you leverage, how will you use them, and what business objectives would you want to achieve through data?
- Benchmark a competitor’s e-commerce site and product functionality.
- You are a Product Manager for Expedia. Your customer segment is international travellers. How would you go about building a product for them?
- Given product X, build a top-down revenue estimate.
- Congrats, you are the CEO! Now, what would you change first about the product?
- Show me your individual process to prioritize a product roadmap and its stories.
- The marketing team called you and asked you to take down your feature from the landing page because it caused lower conversion rates in Italy. What would you do?
- Your boss came to you and said, “We want to shut down one of our brands.” Which one would you suggest?
After this round, the decision is in the hands of the hiring team. Good luck!
How Did COVID-19 Change Hiring at Expedia?
Like most companies, Expedia switched to a fully-remote interviewing process during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Glassdoor responses indicate that the hiring team used Hirevue as a video interview recording tool. Due to stay-at-home and quarantine orders, the pandemic hit travel companies hard, including Expedia. However, the company is still hiring, with more than 1,300 positions currently open, including several on the product team.
As of August of this year, the company is planning a return to office for January of 2022. However, the plan is to establish a hybrid work environment in which employees may work remotely some of the time.
Become an Expedia Product Manager
Want to learn more about becoming an Expedia Product Manager or getting hired at a well-known company? Our career coaches are now offering free sessions: schedule yours today. We’d be glad to answer any of your questions.
