I was with BAT Malaysia for 8 months as an Operations Management Trainee, and left the company in July this year.

To share a bit of my experience, no doubt the company has a grand reputation but personally my experience there was far from rosy. It depends on the individual I guess, on what they really want in their career. No doubt the company's perks and benefits ranks among the best in Malaysia (I'm with an oil and gas company now and BAT's progressive salary is much higher) but they do come at a price. I reckon you've either been offered a job in the Primary Manufacturing Department, or Secondary Manufacturing Department.

The Good: Pay package is good. BAT is at par with some of the top oil and gas companies and better than a lot of others. Benefit-wise isnt bad (3 cartons of Dunhill Lights and RM220 credit for food at cafeteria- which gives you about RM400++ extra each month)If you are in the management team, and get on the listership programme, your career is pretty much accelerated. Its a fairly small company in terms of the structure. As an OCE, you will get in as a Grade 35. The GM is a Grade 41. So you are only 6 grades away from the GM and a high-performer is expected to go up-grades on average once every 3 years. The current Ops Director only took about 10-12 years to get from Management Trainee to Ops Director. Learning curve is steep and you pick up a lot of good management skills there. Dont expect to be working with super smart people tho. Its not the most mentally-challenging job, more of a physically and emotionally challenging job.

The Bad: Be prepared to sacrifice your personal time and personal life. Even if you have a family. As an OCE, your average daily working hours would be 12 hours at the minimum. And weekends you're in, constantly and because you're management, don't expect to get OT. Like it or not, its an FMCG, in a very challenging (yet profitable) industry. Cost-cutting exercise is the name of the game in the industry, so labour power is at bare minimum. One person is expected to do a 3 person's job. Don't be fooled that because it is a MNC it is run like one. The management team is predominantly Malaysian, so expect it to be run like a china-man company. If boss says do, you do! So politics is rife. In order to succeed and climb up quickly, as long as you can impress the few people at the top even without having any real substance then you're in for a long prosperous career in BAT.

I left BAT because I didnt want to get stuck in the tobacco industry or FMCG industry had I stayed there for 3-4 years. Thats the general case the way I see it. Was also not happy that my life was dictated by work, not the other way round. I do admit that it will look good on your CV and will make heads turn if you tell ppl you're from BAT. Career development is fantastic within the company, but I think it has its limitations if you don't intend to stay for too long.

Hope this insight helps. All the best.