A recruiter or a hackathon judge gives your README thirty seconds before deciding whether to look further. Most student READMEs spend those thirty seconds on installation instructions nobody reads yet.
What the top of the README should show, in order
- One sentence: what problem this solves, for whom.
- A live demo link or a GIF/screenshot — proof it runs, before any text about how it runs.
- The one or two technical decisions worth highlighting (why this architecture, why this model).
- How to run it locally, for the reader who wants to verify or extend it.
The mistake to avoid
Leading with a long tech-stack badge list and installation steps buries the one thing a reviewer actually needs first: does this work, and why should I care. Put the proof first.
See an AI portfolio of projects that get interviews for how this fits into the bigger picture of a hiring-ready portfolio.
GenAI engineer and AI product builder with 2+ years shipping production-grade AI systems: RAG pipelines, fine-tuned LLMs, hybrid retrieval and multi-modal apps across vision, speech and OCR, architected end to end from ingestion to deployment. Leads engineering for SCULT INDIA's 14-member team, founded the 500+ member TechVerse Enclave community and has mentored 200+ students. Three hackathon first prizes: Changethon 2025 (IIT Roorkee), Product Genesis at Vividhotsava 2025 (CSJMU Kanpur) and BYTEBATTLE (MeetKats).
Open to GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks at colleges. Email pranjulrathour41@gmail.com.
