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PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

Negotiating your first tech offer as a student: what's actually negotiable

#career #negotiation #offers

Most students accept their first offer exactly as sent, assuming there's no room to negotiate. There usually is — just not always where you'd expect.

What's often negotiable

  • Joining date, if you have another commitment (exams, another interview) — companies flex on this more than on money.
  • Signing bonus or a one-time relocation allowance, even when base salary is fixed by a band.
  • Role or team placement, if the offer is generic and you have a specific interest area with relevant project work to show.

What's usually fixed

For entry-level roles, base salary bands are often genuinely fixed by policy — pushing hard here rarely moves the number and can read poorly for a first job. Ask, once, politely, and accept the answer.

The one rule that matters most: get everything agreed in writing before you resign from anything else or decline another offer.

About Pranjul Rathour

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

Pranjul Rathour in a checked shirt inside a packed college auditorium
In a packed college auditorium

Pranjul Rathour in a suit and tie with a lanyard at a formal campus event
At a formal campus event

Portrait of Pranjul Rathour, GenAI engineer, wearing wire-frame glasses
Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour presenting on stage in a blue polo, with his Annapurna demo video on the screen behind him
Presenting Annapurna on stage

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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