Most engineering students treat placement drives as the route and hackathons as a hobby. Rapolu Venkatesh Satyanarayana did the drives. He attended somewhere between ten and twelve interviews across on-campus and off-campus recruitment, prepared consistently, and was rejected repeatedly.
The offer, when it came, came from the hobby. A six-month Software Developer internship together with an employment opportunity at Odoo, the open-source ERP company whose India operation is based in Gandhinagar, awarded through the Odoo and Parul University Hackathon 2026. He entered it alone.
His story is worth reading closely because the route is genuinely underused and because what made his entry win is specific and repeatable rather than a matter of talent.
The Rejections Came First
Venkatesh, a B.Tech Computer Science and Engineering student of the 2026 batch from Surat, is direct about the part of the journey students rarely hear described. He was not selected in several of the interviews he attended, and each company tested differently: some weighted data structures and algorithms heavily, others development experience, others aptitude, communication or project discussion.
What he changed was not his preparation volume but the question he asked afterwards. Instead of asking why he had failed, he asked what the interview had shown him he did not yet know.
“Rejection is a part of every interview journey. Every interview teaches you something new.” – Rapolu Venkatesh Satyanarayana
That reframing is the difference between ten rejections that erode confidence and ten rejections that function as a diagnostic. By the time he entered the Odoo hackathon he had a fairly precise picture of what the industry tested, assembled from being tested by it repeatedly.
Ten rejections either erode your confidence or map the gap. The question you ask afterwards decides which.
He Had Already Lost This Hackathon Once
The Odoo hackathon was not new to him. He had entered an earlier edition and failed to place.
His hackathon history goes back to his first year, when he entered with almost no advanced technical ability. His team, lacking the programming skill to build what they had imagined, submitted a WordPress prototype. The evaluators did not penalise them for it; they acknowledged the participation and encouraged the team to keep going. He describes that response as having changed his understanding of what hackathons are for.
“Hackathons are the best place to learn because they expose you to real-world problems.” – Rapolu Venkatesh Satyanarayana
He kept entering. At PU Code Hackathon 3.0, organised by Parul University, his team finished in the top ten, which produced no job but did produce the belief that his preparation was working. His summary of the pattern is the most useful sentence in his account.
“Success didn’t come from one hackathon. It came from participating again and again without giving up.” – Rapolu Venkatesh Satyanarayana
The Odoo Hackathon: Eight Hours, Alone
The competition opened with an eight-hour virtual national round in which participants competed individually and in teams. Venkatesh entered as a solo developer, taking the entire project himself from planning and design through coding, testing, debugging and submission.
That decision carried obvious risk. It also meant that every line of the submission was demonstrably his, which mattered later. Participants submitted source code alongside a project demonstration video, and by his account roughly 300 to 400 were shortlisted for the next stage.
Choosing the Harder Problem
The second phase offered two problem statements. Venkatesh chose to build an ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning, management system, despite never having built one.
The choice looked reckless and was not. An ERP system is a serious piece of software, involving multiple interacting modules, real data relationships and genuine architectural decisions, which makes it a far better demonstration of capability than a simpler, familiar project. It also, and this is the part students should notice, is precisely what Odoo builds. He chose the problem that let him show a recruiter he could work on the thing that recruiter actually makes.
Before development began, evaluators interviewed each participant about their intended project: its architecture, scalability, frontend and backend implementation, planned improvements and technology choices. He was able to justify every decision he had made before writing any code, which is a distinct skill from writing it.
Building It Production-Ready, Not Demo-Ready
The decision that separated his submission from the field was refusing to build a prototype.
Most hackathon projects are built to be shown once, on the machine they were written on. Venkatesh built his to be deployed: he designed the architecture, developed the backend, integrated the frontend, managed the database, implemented deployment support, and revised continuously as evaluators gave feedback. Crucially, he built it to run consistently in environments other than his own laptop.
“Building the entire project alone and making it production-ready gave me an edge.” – Rapolu Venkatesh Satyanarayana
The stack he chose reflects current commercial practice rather than academic convenience: Next.js with Tailwind CSS on the frontend, Java with Spring Boot on the backend, MySQL for data, and Docker for containerised deployment. The reasoning behind that stack, and how he arrived at Java specifically, is set out in the Java backend developer roadmap.
Docker was the detail evaluators pressed him on. Containerising the application meant it was portable and could be run reliably anywhere, and being able to explain why that matters demonstrated an understanding of deployment that most student projects never touch.
The Presentation That Became an Interview
The moment he describes as most memorable was not planned by him and, apparently, not announced by them.
He expected to present his ERP system. After roughly fifteen minutes discussing architecture, implementation, source code and scalability, the evaluators closed the demonstration and began asking technical questions instead. The presentation became a technical interview that ran for about an hour and a half, covering SQL, Java and object-orientated programming, backend architecture, debugging, scalability, containerisation and version control.
“The interview came suddenly. I had not prepared for it, but I stayed calm and answered with whatever knowledge I had.” – Rapolu Venkatesh Satyanarayana
He answered what he knew and said so when he did not, rather than guessing. That is worth noting, because interviewers can generally tell, and a candidate who is honest about the edge of their knowledge is more employable than one who is confidently wrong. A full account of what was actually asked appears in what a fresher technical interview actually asks.
The Final Round, and the Call
Participants were given further time to improve their applications. Venkatesh implemented the evaluators’ feedback, added features, refined the interface and prepared a full demonstration video.
The following morning brought an HR interview covering motivation, professional attitude and judgement: why Odoo, why they should hire him, what he would do on encountering an error in his project, how he would respond if a colleague of similar experience were paid more and how he handles pressure. Asked about debugging, he described a method rather than a definition, working from console logs to root cause, then fix, then thorough testing, then verifying stability before deployment. The interviewer was interested in the reasoning, not the textbook.
The call came a few days later: a six-month software developer internship, with an employment opportunity attached. He describes it as entirely unexpected, which after ten to twelve unsuccessful interviews is understandable.
“The opportunity I received through the Odoo Hackathon was completely unexpected, but it was the result of years of consistent effort.” – Rapolu Venkatesh Satyanarayana
What Actually Made the Difference
Read as a sequence rather than a story, the factors are specific and none of them require exceptional talent.
- He kept entering hackathons from his first year, including ones he was underqualified for, and accumulated experience across all of them.
- He treated rejections as diagnostic information rather than verdicts, and adjusted preparation accordingly.
- He entered solo, which meant the work was unambiguously his when questioned.
- He chose the harder problem statement, and one aligned with the recruiter’s own product.
- He built for deployment rather than demonstration, which is the single most visible difference between a student project and a professional one.
- He could justify every technical decision he had made, before and after building.
- He answered honestly under unexpected pressure instead of guessing.
He credits mentorship directly, naming Mr. Umang Panchal and Mr. Maksud Vahora for consistent encouragement to enter competitions and keep going after setbacks. Mr. Panchal also appears in Praneel Pandey’s Apple development journey, which suggests a pattern in how technical participation is encouraged at the faculty. Venkatesh also credits the university’s Impact Training Program with rebuilding his aptitude preparation from a weak base, which he identifies as his hardest area.
“Never give up. Keep learning, keep building, and keep participating. Opportunities will come.” – Rapolu Venkatesh Satyanarayana
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you actually get a job through a hackathon?
Yes, and it is an underused route. Rapolu Venkatesh Satyanarayana, a B.Tech Computer Science and Engineering student at Parul University, received a six-month Software Developer internship with an employment opportunity at Odoo through the Odoo and Parul University Hackathon 2026, after being unsuccessful in ten to twelve conventional placement interviews. Hackathons let a candidate demonstrate working capability directly rather than describing it in an interview.
What makes a hackathon project stand out to recruiters?
Building something production-ready rather than demonstration-ready. Most hackathon projects run only on the machine they were built on. Venkatesh containerised his ERP system using Docker so it could be deployed consistently across environments, designed for scalability, and was able to justify every technology choice when questioned. Choosing a harder problem statement aligned with the recruiter's own product also helped substantially.
Should you enter a hackathon solo or in a team?
Both have merit, but solo entry carries a specific advantage in a recruitment context: the work is unambiguously yours when evaluators question you on it. Venkatesh took complete ownership of planning, design, coding, testing, debugging and submission, which meant he could answer any question about any part of the system. The trade-off is that it demands stronger time management and decision-making under pressure.
How do you handle repeated placement rejections?
By treating each one as diagnostic. Venkatesh attended ten to twelve interviews with several rejections and describes deliberately asking what each interview had taught him rather than why he had failed. Different companies weighted data structures and algorithms, development experience, aptitude, communication and project discussion differently, and the cumulative picture told him precisely what to prepare. His view is that rejection is part of the process rather than a verdict on it.
What should students build to improve their placement chances?
Projects that demonstrate professional practice rather than course completion. That means designing for deployment, using an industry-standard stack, handling data properly, and being able to explain every architectural decision. Venkatesh's advice is to keep building continuously and to publish work online, on the basis that visible capability attracts opportunities that applications alone do not.
