A week before raya, Petronas HR called and asked me to come for structural and technical interview in JB on 26th October 2007. I said OK, confirm I’ll attend the interview. I don’t like interviewing for jobs. I dislike being interviewed but how come I can get the job without this process.

Actually it was a 2nd step in job interview with Petronas after I went for screening interview at Hyatt, Kuantan during their walk in interview and Open Day.

Early morning on October 26, I drove to JB from Kemaman, reached Persada Convention Center at 12.30pm. Great, I met one of the Petronas staff who used to be my client since 10 years ago, at least I got some tips and guides how the interview will be conducted. Well he still recogised me.

The structural interview started at 3.00pm and finished at 4.30pm. It went very well. At least I felt very confident that I did well. The interviewers name, En Idris and En Dzul were so nice, so it was easy to speak with them. OK lah tu, aku passed structural interview. Success!

So I would like to share with you, in case you readers in the coming future go for the structural interview with Petronas.

Day 1
The following questions were not straight forward as how I stated below, but that was what they wanted to know. Dont lie about the technical things, some of them have strong technical knowledge than you man. In this structural interview, only head of department and related field interviewer will ask you. Dont ask about salary la..

Structural test
Introduce your self
Your working experience in oil and gas, or related field.
What you can contribute to Petronas,
What you look in your career,
Why you think you suit to this position,
Can you interprete engineering drawings,
Do you have any relative in government authority such as DOSH, Police etc.
What strength (I answered anything that I know well) do you have..

Thanks God, I can answer all the questions. And what I can say the interview was more to discussion rather than formal interview, and I felt relax most of the time. No stress at all. The good thing is the interviewer wanted to pull me to their department, but then it’s all depend on technical interview.

OK once the interview session finished, HR department came and asked me to come for another interview, a next day morning at 10.00am. OMG i dont have any extra long sleeve. I said OK, I’ll overnight in JB.

I’ve been told that the technical interview will be conducted in 2 separates session, technical test and formal verbal interview.

On the next day, the interview session start at 10.00 am, with a technical test first.

Technical Session

1- Case Study
I got 1 case study.
Title : Creating A PEOPLE STRATEGY in your business

What I need to do is to read the case material, understand the case, what is the key elements, wider implication, main problem and benefit from my answer, plan for bla bla bla and bla.. arghhh! Why they give me this topic.. I didnt know what to present to the interviewer.

Dont worry if you dont know the case study given to you, or the case study is not related to your job. They just wanna see how you think about it.

2- Questionaire 1
25 question within 5 minutes

3- Questionaries 2
88 questions within 5 minutes

4- Questionaires 3
They will give you about 5-6 paragraphs, each paragraph contains 3-4 questions. So total question you need to answer is about 20, finish them within 18 minutes hahaha…
Dont worry, this is multiple choice, TRUE, FALSE and CAN NOT SAY

5- Questionaires 4
Mathematical questionaires, ooh mann.. what I can say, only genius born people can do all the question within 18 minutes. You cannot use calculator or handphone calculator.
Multiple choice as well, a,b,c,d,e. More less 20 questions, I cant remember how many question were there, and I cant complete all the questions huhuhu…
So you wanna know what were the questions all about?

Most of the questions are shown in pie chart. Some question has 2 pie charts, you need to calculate the value, the percentage of ‘cake’ in the chart, the percentage of profit and lost, which you have to look back to another pie chart. To me these questions was easy but tricky, but then without the calculator I only can answer 3-4 questions.

I told the interviewer, the question was tough, and she said yes many of interviewee cant answer most of the questions.

The next session was verbal interview, tougher than the day before.

Interview Session
In this session, you’ll need to present the output of the case study given to you. But before that, I been asked to Introduce myself.. bla bla bla.

Then they moved to others question. I cant remember all but here are some of them.

What do you understand about integrity? Have you faced any case with related to integrity in your work? Of course I have, so just give them example la.

What do you understand with a quality? What do you do to get the quality employee?

How do you find your leadership? What experiences have you had with managing the subordinate?

Your best acheivement? Dont make up a story please, if you have history with Petronas before. I saw they write down my previous well-done project name with Petronas, I think they will check with Petronas Construction group la.. huhu.

There were so many questions, but I cant remember all.

The interview went well. I felt I was able to answer their questions and wasn’t nervous. I asked a few questions to them. One of my question was about blacklist if we turn down their offer. Yes, they said if we turn-down their offer (normally with official offer letter la) we will be blacklisted.

My previous experiences with job interview have taught me not too take them too seriously. I feel more comfortable when I can throw in a bit of humor into a job interview. Without being too casual, I like to ease myself into the interview and help give a more human feel to the experience. I think that it is very important to be yourself in an interview.

What I can say about this interview is, Petronas wanted to hire quality people, positive thinking, smart, etc.. and I think i am out of it.

So what I can learn from this?
This interview is a process of evaluation of myself. Am I able to do the job? Am I willing to do the job? and, am I manageable if hired? There should be a good match between the company’s needs and the applicant’s expectations.

So now, I need to wait the result within 3 week. I dont put much hope on this.. kuikuikui..