Review: An Idiot, Placements and IntervYOU

By Toffee. Grade: A

There are many engineers who have turned into authors successfully, while many are either writing a novel or dreaming of being the next Chetan Bhagat. Toffee a.k.a .Taufeeq Ahmed is another engineer-turned-author, who made his debut with ‘An Idiot, Placement and IntervYOU’. Before you start reading the back blurb, I must tell you about the jacket design. I found it very interesting, just like the name.

An Idiot, Placement and IntervYOU is the story of an engineering student, who talks about how-not-to-flunk placement interviews.

An Idiot, who was a topper in his school all his life, joins one of the finest engineering colleges. And then, like many engineering students, he spends most of his time enjoying the beautiful days of his college life and, in due course, neglects his studies completely. But when he comes to his final year of engineering, one question starts haunting him – ‘What next?’. Its then he starts taking life seriously, does his best and gets placed in his dream company.

A year later, he feels like sharing his experiences with the world and starts writing a simple novel-like book on placements and interviews in a funky, narrative and interesting style.

Welcome to ‘An Idiot, Placements and IntervYOU’.

Right after reading the synopsis, I had the feeling that I would like this book. The initial five pages are about the intentions of the author and the story behind the book. From flipping through these pages I knew that the book was different, entirely different, from those pulp fiction that we usually read by the innumerable engineer-turned-authors flooding the market these days.

The book is intelligently arranged in chapters, strictly according to the rounds of an interview and the narration is really simple. So simple, in fact, that I finished the book in merely four hours. The font is rightly sized and the paper quality is very good.  And, in my experience, when the paper quality is good, any book becomes a lot more fun to read. The plot is no Dan Brown rip off. It’s a simple story about an idiot and how he messed up his engineering years and placement interviews.

The one thing I didn’t like was the use of the many gonna-wanna-gotta sentences that are becoming quite common in day-to-day language with youngsters. When it comes to writing, however, they shouldn’t be used excessively. The target audiences of An idiot…  are final year engineering graduates and if they start using such words in their interviews, it CAN create a bad impression. Leaving that aside, the narration, as I’ve mentioned before, is simple superb. It’s racy and very interesting, and I felt like I was attending a Pre-Interview class.

There are many modified versions of quotes that we read often and examples of people who either succeeded or failed in life.
The most important thing about the book is, every page, every example, everything will teach you something that you might have known for years but never looked at in that way. In Mr. Taufeeq’s own words, “as simple as the word simple”. I must appreciate Mr. Ahmed’s effort to write a non-conventional book in an extremely simple and informative way.

There is a beautiful quote in book that says “You will never know true happiness until you have truly loved, and you will never understand what pain really is until you have lost it.” True to that spirit, the author confessed he wrote this book after he lost his love. But unlike others, he decided to write an unofficial guide to crack interviews and succeeded in it. I am a Software Engineer by education and profession, and have cracked many interviews earlier, so it was quite like reading the same things that I have done, seen or experienced already. But for freshers, if there is any book that they should read before preparing for interviews, it’s An Idiot, Placements and IntervYOU by Toffee.  I want to congratulate Mr. Taufeeq for writing a book that promises infotainment and standing out of the crowd by thinking out of the box. This book will help many engineering students in a completely new way.

On a personal note, thank you for giving me a book that I can gift many of my cousins, juniors and friends.