About Bandana

Bandana is on a mission to improve the livelihoods of hourly workers through transparency and trust, starting with finding better jobs.

The broader vision? Re-ignite the belief in the “American Dream” for workers. Specifically, the American promise that hard work can lead to success — and that this applies to all, not just the privileged few. In short, We envision a world where workers renew their belief in the American Dream.

We seek people who:

• Deliver, Deliver, Deliver: Everything we do should lead to value for workers. Stormy or sunny — we make it happen.
• Push the envelope: We do work beyond what we previously thought possible. We help each other get there. We set the gold standard for quality and speed. All towards a clear direction. And we know that restoring the American Dream is not a 9-to-5 job.
• Ship with heart: Smart isn’t enough. At Bandana, we want people who care deeply about the everyday Americans that we serve. We build for real people. We build with heart.
• Informed opinions, always voiced, loosely held: We form opinions based on evidence and testing, not conventional wisdom or the status quo. We have the conviction that building for workers first is the key to our success. Not everyone agrees.

Learn more about our company vision here, coverage on Techcrunch here, and check out our current product at bandana.com/search.

About the Role

We are looking for a current college/university/grad school student who’s taking time off, interested in the startup nitty-gritty, and can punch far, far above their weight.

You don’t have to be technical. But you do have to have grit, willingness to learn, and an insatiable desire to grow 1% every day. The ideal candidate knows they want to be a startup founder someday — and wants to find out if they have what it takes.

You could be taking a gap semester, looking for a co-op internship or externship where you’ll do real work, or even just graduated. This will have the hours of a full-time startup job during the duration of the internship.

Willing to sponsor J-1 visas for exceptional candidates.

What you’ll do:

• Test, execute, learn, and (if successful) roll out projects across the Bandana team.
• Assist with the core operational systems and processes that make Bandana run.
• Fill in any and all of the operational gaps.

Examples of prior projects that you could be working on:

• Deepen our job coverage within both existing and new markets
• Run resume workshops and table job fair events
• Figured out which companies have qualified jobs for Bandana and research every company’s benefit information.
• Deep research of employee benefits that goes beyond publicly available information
• Cold outbound to businesses to co-create social media content
• Conducted user research and interviews on both the worker and business sides of our marketplace
• Identifying new companies with qualified jobs that should be added to the Bandana platform
• Create grassroots public advocacy through local community and government organization outreach
• Cold phone outreach & door-to-door sales of local businesses to sponsor jobs on the Bandana platform

Skills you have:

• You can problem solve. Example: we need to get this product in front of 1,000 net new users in 2 days. How would you do that?
• Google sheets experience for basic market sizing, cost estimation, return-on-investment estimation.

What we’re looking for:

• Grit & Hustle: Get-shit-done attitude, with willingness to roll up your sleeves.
• Creativity Within Ambiguity: When we tell you to “go test and figure it out”, you can test and learn, quickly!
• Speed & Independence: You have a track record of driving projects from 0-to-1 quickly and autonomously.
• Growth Mindset: You have an innate desire to always be learning, no matter the knowledge source.
• Heart & Head: You’re kind. You balance decision-making with both logic and emotional intelligence.

Bonus if you have:

• Community-building experience from absolute 0 to hundreds, if not 1,000’s of people.
• Proven you know how to go viral. Bandana runs on organic social media - we live and breathe content.
• Cold outbound and/or door-to-door sales experience.
• Deep personal experience with our core target audience of American hourly workers.

Who You’d Work With

Report to: Caleb Lee - COO / Co-Founder

Work closely with:

• Timothy (Tim) Makalinao - CEO / Co-Founder
• Adrian Abeijon - Growth Operations Manager
• Vicky Xu - Head of Product

See What is Bandana - About the Founding Team for more information.

Interview Process

The non-technical internship interview process typically involves 3 components:

1. Quick chat: 10-15min video or phone conversation with one of the Bandana founders.
2. Take-home Assignment: 1-2hr assessment that mirrors day-to-day work that you might be assigned to.
3. Interview(s): Review of take-home assessment & personal fit interview with 1 or 2 Bandana founders.

Duration of Role

The duration of this fall 2024 role is intended to last 12-14 weeks, starting in late August/early September and lasting up until the winter holiday season, depending on your university’s schedule.

Location & Work Policy

Bandana is based in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. We believe in the power of face-to-face, personal connection. As a result, we are only considering in-person candidates that are expected to be present at our office 5x days a week whenever not in the field.

Compensation

Compensation for this role is $13,846 for a 12-week internship; longer time periods will be prorated at a similar rate. We cover lunch at the office, and have other fun activities in-person.