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PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

Answering 'tell me about a project' without rambling for five minutes

#career #interview #communication

'Tell me about a project' is the single most common interview question, and the single most commonly botched one — a chronological retelling of every step, with the interesting decision buried in minute four.

A structure that works

  1. The problem, in one sentence: what wasn't working, for whom.
  2. The interesting decision: the one trade-off or technical choice that actually mattered, and why you made it that way.
  3. The result: what changed, ideally with a number.
  4. One thing you'd do differently now — this signals growth, not weakness.

Practice the thirty-second version first

If you can't compress your project into thirty seconds using this structure, you haven't yet identified what actually mattered about it. Build the short version first, then let the interviewer's follow-up questions pull out the depth.

See an AI portfolio of projects that get interviews.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour, GenAI engineer from Kanpur, in a white turtleneck and black jacket, looking to the side
Pranjul Rathour — GenAI engineer, Kanpur

Pranjul Rathour speaking into a microphone on stage at a MeetKats event
Speaking at a MeetKats event

Pranjul Rathour holding a microphone while answering a question during a session
Taking questions during a session

Pranjul Rathour in a grey suit at Dr. Virendra Swarup Institute of Computer Studies (VSICS), Kanpur
At VSICS, Kanpur

Pranjul Rathour in front of an Integral Startup Foundation hackathon backdrop
At an Integral Startup Foundation hackathon

Pranjul Rathour is a GenAI engineer from Kanpur, India, and CTO at SCULT INDIA, currently shipping production RAG,
fine-tuning and agentic AI systems, mentoring 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave, and judging and speaking at
student hackathons across India. Updated 2026-09-07.

Reach out if you want to talk GenAI, book a campus session, or invite him to judge:

Pranjul Rathour · GenAI engineer, 3x hackathon winner, campus mentor. Open for GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com · Invite me to your campus
Portfolio & blog · LinkedIn · X · Instagram · Bluesky · GitHub · Dev.to

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