The salary conversation after a campus offer
Sundar Systems has made you an offer through the placement cell. HR has called to walk you through it. On a campus drive the headline package is usually fixed for the whole batch — but what is inside it is not always what a student assumes, and asking is not rude. You want to understand the in-hand figure, the service agreement, the location and the joining date before you say yes.
An advanced-level session of about 8 minutes.
"It is standard for the whole batch" — said pleasantly, largely true, and it closes the conversation if you let it. The HR executive has forty of these calls today and opens with the CTC figure because that is where the script starts. Everything you actually want to know sits underneath that number, and every question you ask spends time already allocated somewhere else. So the difficulty is tone rather than content: staying warm while asking a second time, because a first answer often comes back as reassurance instead of a figure. The headline number itself is fixed for everyone in your batch, so none of this is a negotiation. You are making sure you know what you are agreeing to before you agree to it.
Angles worth taking
- Accept the offer warmly before you ask anything; questions that follow gratitude land differently from questions that replace it.
- When an answer comes back as reassurance, ask once more using the exact word you want a number for.
- Write the breakup down as they say it and read it back, because people correct their own numbers when they hear them.
- If a question makes them pause, that is the one to finish, since a pause means the answer is off script.
- Saying you will confirm once you have read the letter is ordinary and rarely costs anyone an offer.
Who is in the room
You play
A final-year student who has just received a campus offer
You speak with
An HR executive who is friendly, has forty of these calls to make today, quotes the CTC first, and says the package is standard for the batch when pushed on the number
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 roleplay scenariosThe format
Modes
Learn (guided) · Mock (exam-real)
How a roleplay session works
Read your brief
Your role, the situation, and what a good outcome looks like. The counterpart has their own brief, and you do not get to read it.
Open the conversation
You speak first in most scenarios. How you open sets what you can ask for later, which is most of the exercise.
Handle the turn
Somewhere in the middle it stops going your way — a refusal, a counter-offer, a rebuttal you did not prepare for. That moment is the scenario.
Read the report
Outcome, the phrases you used and the ones you missed, fluency and clarity, and the specific line worth rewriting.
What you're scored on
Across every roleplay, the report looks at the same four things — because they are what makes a real conversation work or fail.
Get clear, specific answers on in-hand pay, the service agreement, the posting location and the joining date — politely, without either demanding more money or agreeing to something you have not understood.
Task outcome
Whether you got what the brief asked for: the refund, the extension, the concession, the point conceded.
Appropriacy
Whether the register fits. A complaint that is too soft gets nothing; the same complaint too hard gets a manager and no refund.
Recovery
What you do with the unexpected turn — repair, rephrase, push back, or stall. This is where most of the marks move.
Delivery
Fluency, pronunciation and pace, judged in conversation rather than in a prepared monologue.
More roleplay scenarios
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