RateMyPlacement’s guide to undergraduate placements & internships in Engineering

Work & Industry Guide

1. 1 Real Student Experiences
2. 2 Industry Background
3. 3 Featured Employer
4. 4 Jobs in Engineering

Questions & Answers

What was the application process like?

I applied for a year long internship with BP. The process involved completing an online application form, which included some essay style questions. (Now you would also need to take some verbal and numerical online psychometric tests.) This gave me a great opportunity to demonstrate my passion with I had for the internship at an early stage of the application. Following this I was invited to the London offices in Sunbury for face to face interviews. There I was asked about both technical aspects and also competency related questions. The interviews were challenging but also fun to work through. The technical interview allowed me to talk through my thought process, I was asked to design something which I had not yet covered in detail at University, but the assessor was keen to see my methodology rather than just knowing the correct answer from the offset.

What did you do on a daily basis?

I worked in the Upstream segment of the business, which is involved in discovering, obtaining and extracting oil and gas from reservoirs around the world. I worked on a variety of projects at once, including design work, safety assessments and operational reviews, technology research and the development of software tools to name a few. Most of my work was office based, but the benefit of my role was that I worked on such a variety of projects that I really got a taste of what BP is like all across the globe.

What were the highlights of the job?

The biggest highlight of the job for me was to work on a major project that BP was interested in Iraq. I worked on a huge amount of the initial design for separation and flowlines between facilities. This project really gained momentum and exposure within the company and as a result I had an opportunity to meet and work with world experts. The project was really challenging and also really fulfilling, deadlines were always very close so I dedicated a lot of time to my work to meet these. The real joy was discovering that my work lead to the successful bid for the Rumaila oil field in Iraq, from which BP is now producing 1146 million barrels of oil a day.

What was your greatest challenge?

The biggest challenge for me was being asked to present my work on liquefied natural gas weathering models to the commercial teams at Canary Wharf. My project was inherently very technical, and the resulting spreadsheet incorporated some very complex work, but the really enjoyable aspect was explaining this in a presentation to colleagues who are not engineers and as such are more interested in the financial and business aspects of the project. It was challenging but extremely fulfilling, and probably one of the most enjoyable presentations I have delivered.

How has this internship affected your career prospects?

This placement could not have improved my graduate job prospects more! After attending a graduate assessment centre at the end of my internship, I was offered a graduate job. This really took the pressure off of me in my final 2 years at university when my peers were looking for jobs.

What was the social life like?

Because BP takes on a large number of interns each year, and there is a large established graduate community, it was very easy to make new friends and socialise. There were always events being organised, and with the proximity to central London, nights out were always happening on weekends!