Technical HR: your project, your fundamentals, your choices
The L1 round at Sundar Systems, taken by a delivery lead rather than a recruiter. It is half about your final-year project and half about whether you understand the basics you listed on your resume. Nobody expects a system design here — they expect you to be able to explain what you built and why, without a slide deck.
An intermediate-level session of about 12 minutes. 8 questions, each answered out loud.
Your resume is the question paper. Whatever sits in the skills line — a language, a database, a framework listed because a certificate mentioned it — is fair to ask about, and a delivery lead tends to start with whichever one you look least comfortable saying out loud. The fundamentals here are ordinary: what a join does, why an index helps, the difference between two data structures you listed yourself. The trap is not the question. It is the reflex to keep talking after the part you know has run out. A clean 'I know the definition, I have not used it beyond coursework' scores better than ninety seconds of drift, and it usually earns a smaller follow-up rather than a harder one. The other half of the round is your project, and there the lead is listening for whether the choices were yours or your guide's.
Angles worth taking
- Read your own resume aloud beforehand and cut any skill you cannot survive two questions on — an unclaimed skill costs nothing.
- Explain a fundamental with the smallest concrete case you can build — one table, two rows — rather than reciting the definition.
- When you half-know something, say which half: 'I have used it; I cannot tell you how it works underneath.'
- For 'why that and not the other one', a real constraint — time, what the team already knew — counts.
- Have one bug ready: what broke, how you narrowed it down, what it turned out to be. Debugging stories carry further here than feature lists.
Who is in the room
You play
A final-year student in the technical round of a campus drive
You speak with
A delivery lead at Sundar Systems taking the L1 round, who asks "why that and not the other one?" whenever an answer stays on the surface
Phrases to reach for
These are shown to you before the session starts. They are what you are asked to use, not a list the scorer is checking off.
Ready to speak?
Free to start. You need a TalkDrill account to speak — reading this page does not.
Browse all mock interview roundsThe format
Questions in this round
8
Modes
Learn (guided) · Mock (exam-real)
How a mock interview session works
Pick a round
HR, behavioural, or a role-specific set. Each one tells you how many questions it runs and roughly how long it takes.
Answer out loud
Questions come one at a time and you speak the answer. There is a clock, because a two-minute answer and a five-minute answer are different answers.
Take the follow-ups
Answers get followed up. A vague claim gets pressed on, which is what separates a rehearsed answer from a true one.
Read the report
Structure, evidence, filler and pace per answer, plus the one answer worth recording again before the real thing.
What you're scored on
Every round is assessed the same way, because interviewers are broadly consistent about what a good spoken answer contains.
Explain your project so a non-expert follows it, defend one technical choice you made, and answer a fundamentals question honestly when you do not know the full answer.
Structure
Whether the answer has a shape — situation, action, result — or arrives somewhere by accident after ninety seconds.
Evidence
Specifics over adjectives. "We cut it from six days to two" against "we improved the process significantly".
Relevance
Whether you answered the question asked, including the follow-up, rather than the question you prepared for.
Delivery
Pace, filler words, and whether the last third of the answer is as clear as the first.
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