Downstream Chemistry and Engineering Discovery Day Review

The insight day was extremely enjoyable. The good structure of the discovery day made me feel as if I was important. The activities were well tailored to our level of experience and generally the event had a very relaxed, welcoming and friendly atmosphere. I found the advice given by the graduate recruiters very insightful and helped me a lot in deciding which field of further studies I would like to pursue in the future.

The highly structured nature of the discovery day, along with the hosts' friendly attitude towards all of us made me feel very valued during my time at BP. I loved the fact that the recruiters took their time to plan and organise this event. You could tell that no effort had been spared to make us feel welcome at BP.

There was a 2 hour skills workshop. During the first hour, we worked on application forms (with specific relevance to BP). It included a break down of the application process to BP, an explanation of each step in the application, advice for each step and also examples of questions/ scenarios which you might find in each step. This will no doubt be helpful for future years when I apply for internships and graduate schemes not only at BP but other firms/ companies aswell. The second hour included interview preparation wherein we discussed the best way to structure your interview answers (which we had some practice with with the recruiters at BP). This part was very useful and the recruiters gave each and every person advice on their answers and how to improve.

The Discovery Day was extremely well structured. A programme was created before arrival and the schedule was maintained throughout the day. Each part of the programme involved different employees/ parts of the building and at no time in the day was an employee late or the buildings being shown to us closed off/locked to us.

ALL the employers were very helpful, nice, funny and most importantly willing to talk. You can tell everyone at BP loves their job. Everyone was friendly, treated us as adults not interns. The buildings, in particular the one where we spent most of our time, were fairly modern, very well lit and in general created a very warm and welcoming environment. It was also very lucky that the weather was perfect!

Given that this insight was only a Discovery Day, the extent to which BP invests in its employers can't quite be drawn from what occured to myself. However having said this, the very small groups of people in the workshops showed BP were not hesitant to make us gain the most from the workshops even if it required the help of extra employees. Also, during a talk from a Vice President in the technology field, we gained an insight into the different places he had been on business and the wide variety of opportunity for personal training and development available at BP.

During lunchtime about a dozen employees were invited into the conference room where we were based. These employees ranged from current interns up to vice presidents in their respective field. Being able to talk to these people one to one, ask them about their daily lives gave me a very good understanding of what a range of employees who all work full time do on a daily basis and what role they play within the company. Also we had presentations from one intern and 2 graduates on what their research is based on and what they do on a daily basis.

The five values of BP are Safety, Respect, One-Team, Courage and Excellence. The discovery day built upon all of these factors and it could be seen that these values were ingrained within the culture of BP. Being able to experience how important these five values are to BP was highly educating.

Before attending the Discovery Day i was unsure whether to specialise in Physics Maths, Materials Science or Chemistry (I study natural sciences) however after talking to the Chemists and finding out about their very interesting research, I am now very confident that Chemistry is the field of study that I wish to persue.

I was reimbursed travel expenses of up to £100. However, expenses of >£100 including accommodation if your journey is >3hours were also reimbursed provided you contact the team and gave them a break down of the cost (and also subject to a few rules such as no first class tickets etc)

The whole lunch revolved around networking and meeting other employees of the firm. In fact it was called 'Networking Lunch'! As mentioned earlier, we were split into two tables and about half a dozen employees sat inbetween us (there were 10 prospective interns/graduates to each table) and during our hour lunch break we were able to talk to the employees about how they find working in BP, what they like/dislike about BP and how they got to where they are at now.

See above.

A little bit, however personally I wanted to know more about their research and what they do within the business.

The day was not only educating and insightful however also enjoyable. The structure, friendliness and general atmosphere of the day made me feel very valued and made for a great day. I would DEFINITELY recommend this insight to a friend who wanted to do chemistry or engineering (or like me doesnt know what they want to specialise in!). It proves be one of the best ways to experience industrial chemistry and hence gives you an opportunity to find out about science after university.