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PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

Becoming a repeat hackathon judge: what organisers actually remember about you

#hackathonjudging #paneljudge #repeatinvites

An organiser planning next year's hackathon rarely recalls a judge's exact scores from last year. What sticks is punctuality, the quality of written feedback, and whether the judge stayed calm and useful when the schedule slipped — which it always does.

What actually gets remembered

  • Showing up on time, prepared, having read the problem statements in advance.
  • Written feedback specific enough that a team quoted it back to the organiser afterward.
  • Flexibility when a session runs long or a team's slot moves — judges who complain about schedule slips are remembered for that, not their scoring.

The compounding effect

Being the easy, reliable judge to work with, repeated across several events, is what eventually gets a judge recommended by one organiser to another — which is how most judging invitations actually happen.

See how to become a hackathon judge.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour holding a trophy and a certificate of merit after a win
Trophy and certificate after a win

Pranjul Rathour presenting evaluation criteria — feasibility, innovation, practicality, problem solving — on a projector screen
Walking a room through evaluation criteria

Pranjul Rathour presenting BrandHive on a projector screen
Presenting BrandHive

Pranjul Rathour in a shirt and tie holding a microphone in front of a career-opportunities slide
A career session for students

Pranjul Rathour presenting with a microphone in front of a slide reading 'Now what's the conclusion?'
Presenting to a room

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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