The world is fair.

Imagine 15 years ago, those Shell IT staff in Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, China, Hong Kong, Australia, UK, Netherlands, Germany, US and etc lost their jobs to Malaysians.

Shell Cyberjaya created many opportunities for many Malaysians - especially those SAP contractors. Many became multi-millionaires. Even today, many Project Managers are earning good monies from Shell Cyberjaya.

If there is anything to blame, I blame the government for:

- Not producing enough qualified graduates who are well versed in English.
- Never offer good opportunities for Shell. If Shell has enough upstream projects, the saving for shifting to India is negligible.
- Lack of focus to develop Cyberjaya - more interested in property development than any other things.

Nevertheless, many of us should thank Shell for the past 20 years (from the days SSI was formed).

What make you think that you are lucky? Because your current job is more secure?

In fact, I have been extremely lucky for decades because of Shell IT. It is not merely monetary, but the culture, safety, management technique and many lessons to learn.

Shifting to India is not new for Shell. They did it since 2004 by outsourcing their downstream ABAP factory and legacy SAP systems to Wipro and IBM India. That was 11 years ago! Each outsourcing exercises Shell did, after 2004, created many opportunities for local talents to learn, explore and grow. Today, many experienced and well-trained ex-Shell staffs are in big well-known companies holding important positions.

You never know what you miss - because you have not been in the position to view things differently.

If you are referring to those Finance shared services, then it is a different story. Firstly, Shell is listed in US market and SOx compliance is mandatory. Therefore, jobs are required to have segregation of duties. So, it is inevitable that some of these staffs only know certain areas. And, they are supposed to know very well because they should know the country-specific statutory requirements since they usually support more than 1 country.

Anyway, the purpose of shared services is like producing Ford's model T. No doubt, you could be in a German MNC. But, you are not in the share service fields like BASF, BHP, BP, Air Products, Worley Parsons and etc. So, to me, you should have skip those cv in the first place since their experiences are not relevant to your company. The girl that applied your opening should have try out those share service centres instead of your company.

To me, it is very simple to dig out information. Just go to Linkedin, search the keywords "Shell Cyberjaya" and take a look into the list of people used to work in Shell Cyberjaya. Then, look at their current positions.

Nevertheless, Shell is going to recruit more share services staffs to fill in their office at Cyberjaya. So, be prepared to see more these sort of cv in the market.
That's true for workforces at operational levels. For senior levels who are the process custodians, they should know end-to-end processes. Quite a number of ex-Shell finance staffs are doing quite well in local public listed companies.