Hi everyone,

I am a newbie in this forum. I was wondering if anyone can be so kind as to give me some insight about the Finance department at Petronas. 

I am having my SI with Petronas this Wednesday for the position in their Finance department. I'm a fresh grad who just finished my ACCA examinations. I have a degree in Accounting and Finance from one of the leading universities in the UK. I'm also an ACCA Affiliate with only 4months of work experience so far   

I have tried my best to find some information on the Finance department  at Petronas on this forum and on Google as a whole but to no avail. 

I got through to the Petronas SI as Petronas advertised to students currently in the UK that they're coming for the recruitment process. As I am a non-Petronas scholar, I wonder if the selection process would be any different than their own scholars.

I would be really grateful if anyone can provide some insight about the Finance department, the pay and benefit schemes for the Finance staff as whole, etc.

p.s : Sorry for the long post!

S x

Hey thanks for sharing your interview experience. Are you an experienced worker? i'm a fresh graduate majoring in non technical major. I will be attending their SI this Thursday, the HR personnel informed me that I was shortlisted for SI, not like yours; the chit chat session. I wonder if the chit chat session is included in my SI tomorrow.. perhaps i should figure out how tall is KLCC :-D

Hey carolee1209, I attended the SI today and I asked is there any other stage after this and she said no; this is the last one before I will be informed whether I'm recommended or not. They said I can give them a call after a week to know the status of the interview. Overall it was okay, I think for me it was more like a discussion. Since a lot of people have been sharing their experience, I might as well share mine . 

My interview was scheduled at 10am but I've to wait for the person before me to finish his session. 2 hours after that I was called. My assessors were very friendly. Me myself, I'm pretty talkative so I managed to leave my stress and nerves outside the door. Oh forgot to mention that the case study I was given was about customer dissatisfaction. There's only like 5 paragraph if I'm not mistaken. I had an hour to prepare for my ideas but lucky me while I was on board yesterday I read my school (LOL school? in the US they called college/university= school) book about how to manage a business, so it really helped a lot. I wrote on a piece of paper about my ideas, pros, cons, long and short terms solutions, examples. I came out with several examples to strengthen my opinion but ended up didn't use any of them. Reading a lot will help you this. But I believe it was more about how you think. How do you come out with a solution? Are you systematic? Be confident and firm on your decision/proposal. They challenged me with lots of arguments. I'm surprised at myself, I didn't panic (I'm a very gelabah person actually HAHAH). Before the case study discusion, there's a ice breaking about background, schools, majors, strength, weaknesses etc. Basic stuffs that you don't need to prepare much.

Then onto CBI, they asked me about 2 things. 1) Any challenge you have faced before and how you deal with it. They gave me time to think for a while. I was prepared for this question actually (gotten by reading the whole tread and googling about petronas interview questions). They asked me to explain every detail of the story.  Then 2) Learning on fly. Describe something that you've to pick up fast; something that is really new for you and you need to master it in a short time. It was more like a story telling imho hehe.

The last one is role play. I was  given two cards. I heard they just want to do one card (I think they're hungry because we all haven't had our lunch yet so they wanna finish soon). But in the end I had to do two cards. Some people say the more cards you get the better you're doing but some say the opposite. I think how many cards are given doesn't give any indication of how your performance is. It's all depends on the interviewers, only the know (of course). I was a manager, then the directors gave us a project that we need to complete it within 3 days. Two of my workers didn't want to stay back because they had other important commitments. I think I didn't do quite well..so they gave me the second card. This time I got into the game and acted well (ahah or so I think). Basically, this part you're in charged, you can create any situation you wish for based on what they said. They argued with me, challenged me, but I just stayed calm. Empathy is the key here. As a manager I told them that it is important for me to reach out to my staffs. Since my staffs are burden with lots of works in 3 days, I told the interviewers that it is important for me to always concern about their (staff) condition. I would call all of them for a meeting to update on the progress and at the same time listen to their problems. Let them release their stress..share the problem among ourselves and be positive. So when everyone goes out of the meeting room, there will be less pressure. Hence, increase the productivity.

I asked them a question; what motivates them to go to work everyday? Omagerd I'm happy that I ask them because they give me insight of how a working world is. Very interesting. One of the interviewer gave me a lot of advises. They talked about their work for almost 15minutes. hahah so I just listened and nodded.

Overall, alhamdulillah I think I did okay. I hope I'll get a good news but I'm very satisfied with my own performance, and thats all matters to me. Perhaps I should have read and remember more of Petronas's story to show them that I'm very interested in their company. I didn't give any example from Petronas when I'm defending my ideas. So guys, please read about Petronas more than I did and tell them about what you know. Everyone I know who had done an interview will tell me to just be myself. Yes that's absolutely true. Just be yourself and everything will flow naturally.Hmm what else..oh yea, the assessors are flexible in language. They spoke rojak to me haha..
So good luck to anyone if you happen to have an upcoming interview.