Bandlingo is a one-person operation today. The first hire will land in the next few months, and contractor briefs are open right now. Here's where things stand.
Some study-abroad consultancies post 30 open roles to look bigger than they are. We're not that. There's one open contractor brief and one full-time role on the horizon. Everything else is "happy to chat".
Bandlingo is profitable from month one because there is one of me, and I don't pay myself the salary I'd want until the unit economics stretch. The plan is to add people only when adding them lets us take more students without dropping the quality bar.
Practically that means:
I look for two things, in this order: did this person get themselves through a high-stakes English test or study-abroad cycle and come out the other side, and can they write clearly under deadline pressure?
Most of our work is writing — SOPs, visa cover letters, counselling notes, examiner feedback. Plus a calm voice on a WhatsApp message at 11pm when a student's I-20 is held up at the consulate.
If you've never been through the visa-or-test gauntlet yourself, you'll probably empathise less well with anxious applicants. Not a hard rule. But it's the thing.
Two live briefs and three roles we'll be hiring for once student volume justifies it. We do not have a graduate program, an unpaid internship program, or open volunteer slots.
Recent grad (2022 onward) from a top-200 university. Critique 4–6 student SOPs per week against the standard each program actually accepts. Two-paragraph written feedback. Paid per file.
CELTA-certified, ex-IDP or British Council examiner. Re-grade flagged Speaking and Writing attempts when our AI score is borderline. ~5–15 scripts per week to start. Strict 24-hour SLA.
The first full-time hire after me. Owns 30–40 student files end-to-end. Past experience working in study-abroad, immigration, or admissions desks essential. Indian work authorisation required.
Take over the app and backend from me. Comfortable shipping to production weekly, fluent in Flutter and TypeScript. We'll talk when revenue covers a senior salary with two years of runway.
Licensed or licensable visa consultant. Owns the paperwork side once the second cohort lands. Realistically, this is 2027.
Two kinds of pitches land. (1) You've done something we plainly need help with — a writer who's prepped students for IELTS Writing Task 2 for 8 years, an SEO contractor who can rank long-tail "MS in [country]" queries, a video editor who can produce 3-minute student testimonials. (2) You can do something we don't know we need, and you can prove it in two paragraphs.
Tell me what you'd do in the first 30 days, what it'd cost, and what success looks like. Skip the resume rundown.