Interview with Bumi Armada

Ananda Krishnan is the major shareholder of Bumi Armada

  After my graduation, I applied for a lots of job related to the oil and gas industry. Most of them, I did online, basically just send a cover letter or letter of inquiry to the interested company with my resume and a letter of recommendation from my previous employer as attachments. Unfortunately, most of my applications ended up wt no response.

  So, I thought I have to change my plan of action. Luckily, last 2 weeks, my best friend from UTP told me that there would be a career placement week on the next day. I decided to attend the event since few reputable oil and gas companies would be there setting up their booth for exhibition.

  My new plan worked, it was worth driving 2 hours from my house to UTP since I got a very good response from Bumi Armada Berhad. The exhibitor for the company asked me to call him back on Monday to schedule an interview. Sounds biasa je kan but for me, that was a huge stepping stone cz it was a pretty good improvement for my job hunting and it helped me to keep myself motivated to continue looking for a job.

  On Monday, as requested, I called him and he asked me choose the date and time for the interview. I chose Wednesday morning cz I thought I need a little bit time to prepare for the interview. Actually, it was my first “professional interview” and I didn’t want to screw it up and lost my chance to be employed.

  I took bus from Parit Buntar to Bkt Jalil on Tuesday morning. Once arrived at BJ, I took LRT and transited at Bandar Tasik Selatan to take Komuter to my last destination, Serdang where my friend picked me up. I stayed at his house at Putrajaya for a night.

  On the next morning, I woke up pretty early to get ready for the interview. From Putrajaya, I took KLIA transit at 7:30 am and arrived at KL Sentral around 8:00 am. It was still early since my interview was scheduled at 10:00 am. So, I took some time to read the newspaper,.I actually expected that the interviewer would ask me about current issues especially about the Commonwealth Games that was going on that time at New Delhi, India. Our athletes did have pretty good performance, tallied few gold, silver and bronze in the first few days.

  At about 9:00 am, I brought all my stuffs and locked them in a locker. I paid RM 5 for it and I just took all the necessaries to the interview such as resume, scroll, recommendation letter and few other certificates. The interview would be held at Menara Perak. Based on map that found in the web, the building is not that far from KLCC. So, I rode Putra LRT to KLCC and then I took cab to the building. It was better to take cab just to make sure I won’t get lost finding the location.

  I arrived at Menara Perak around 9:15 am and since it was still early,  I just hanged out at the lobby and read all my notes for the last minutes. However, I felt a little bit nervous and that caused me to lose focus reading my materials. I decided to just go to the office at level 21.

  “Hi there, I have an interview wt Mr dot dot at 10:00 am”, I said to the receptionist once I arrived at the office. Then, she called Mr dot dot and asked me to wait for a moment.

   After few minutes, another HR officer that I met at UTP came and from this moment, I knew the interview had started. I had to impress her. I talked to her before. She was nice and quite friendly.  I greeted her properly and she told that the interview would be held a room on the lower floor. So, I just followed her to the interview room.

  Once we entered the room, she asked for all the documents that I brought. She went out to photocopy all the documents and call another interviewer from the engineering department. The view from the room was quite impressive. I can see Petronas twin tower from that point. If I can work there, it would be great. haha

  After few minutes, she came back and started to converse with me. How did you get here? Where did you stay last night?

  While answering, another lady came. She was introduced as an engineer from the engineering department. She was pretty serious. I guess I was being rude. I did not stand up enter the room. I knew I suppose to do that. Busy answering the previous questions made me forgot. Shooot!!

Time to get serious. The first lady asked me few questions just in a sentence.

  Tell me about your self, your expectation and so on. It was pretty easy, normal stuff.

Then the other lady started. What do you know about Bumi Armada? I knew the answer cz I did my homework.hehe

  Where do you see yourself fit into our organization? Damn it, it wasn’t hard but I didn’t really prepare for it.

  After hearing my answer, the lady explained to me about engineering department and what kind of works they do. Basically, they more focus on the design, front end engineering desing (FEED).

“ You are the first petroleum engineering student that we interview,” she said to me, I still can remember the sentence precisely, bugging my ears.

  “ Do you think you still fit into our organization?” Shot! Arghh, what to say. Luckily, the first lady saved me. She explained to the second lady that I came for the graduate development program which I heard about it but I didn’t that I was interviewed for the program..haha. The first lady started to talk about the development program. It’s pretty interesting program and I really hope that I could join it. The second lady also added few things about the program, she talked about how important to ask question if we need clarifications.

  “Exactly, for me, there is no stupid question. If you are curious about something, just shot and ask,” I said to her in response to her explanation. Pretty cool response huh?..hehe

  “Is processing engineering similar to petroleum engineering?,” the second lady asked another question. Honestly, I was not really sure. I guess, it’s different cz processing is downstream and petroleum is more toward upstream.

  Finaly question, do you have any question?hehe..Once again, I guess I blew my biggest chance to impress them here. I knew I should and could have done better.

  What are the next steps for the selection process? Usually, how many persons will be chosen to join the development program? That’s all my questions, simple and not challenging at all.

  The interview took roughly about 1 hour. I guess I did ok but I didn’t expect too much for the position. Let just wait and see, but don’t forget to pray.