First-time judging comes with a handful of surprises that a rubric alone doesn't prepare you for — the actual pace and fatigue of a long event, and a few genuinely awkward moments most first-timers don't expect.
What surprises most first-time judges
- How mentally tiring back-to-back pitches actually are — attention genuinely degrades faster than it feels like it should.
- How often a team asks a judge directly, mid-pitch, whether their idea is good — and how important it is to stay neutral until scoring, not tip your hand.
- How much of the day is logistics and waiting, not actual judging — pack patience, not just a rubric.
The one piece of advice that would have helped most
Score and write notes immediately after each pitch, before the next team starts — this single habit, mentioned upfront, would have saved a lot of end-of-day scrambling to remember details.
See five mistakes every first-time hackathon judge makes.
— Pranjul Rathour, GenAI Engineer from Kanpur, India. Open to GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks at any campus: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com.