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After 531 unanswered applications, and 11 other interviews blundered, you are desperate for a job. Any job. Ambling down the hall to the recruiter's office, a sense of foreboding looms in your psyche, your sweaty palms betray your inner-torture. Your lungs wheeze when the HR manager comes into full view, your knees suddenly weak with an involuntary spasm. You croak your name, and offer a limp handshake. You mouth an insincere greeting, while your facial muscles try to scrunch a sorry attempt of a smile. The tension in the air stifles your attempt to lighten the mood; The interviewer's visible boredom forges an invisible force field between you, an unfortunate by-product of insomnia and routine. The dialogue forges ahead with a flurry of attacks on your credentials, and the lackadaisical rhythm of your rebuttals cause the conversation to spiral into a familiar abyss of failure. Your hope vanquished, your defeat imminent, you leave with your tail between your legs.
So what's next? Resign to the fact that you'll have to opt for minimum wage or join a circus? Let's not wallow in your sorrow. Drag yourself up, dust your depression off, and let's get working on your interviewing skills. What, you thought that interviews are just Q&A sessions and dumb luck? Fortunately for you, I'm here to point out the mistakes you've made, and give you some tips to correct those opportunity killers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------You Wore Failure on Your Face
You are guilty of letting your previous failures get the best of you. Yes, in difficult times, you were downsized. Yes, nobody from your old life appears to even care. Yes, you feel dejected and embarrassed. And yes, you thought you would never have to apply for unemployment cheques.
Fortunately for you, no recruiter knows about your burdens. They don't know you haven't eaten for three days, and you are minutes away from being evicted. What they do need to know is, that they need you more than you need them. Make them believe this fact. Your belief and confidence in yourself, will expunge their doubts. Your credentials, while it might not entirely fit the job description, may not the end all be all, because they made the first gesture by calling you into the room. So, exude the confidence of somebody in control. I wrote another article on gaining confidence, "Command the Room: 5 Incredible Tips to Influence with Confidence and Charisma", but you don't have time for reading yet another article. You seek immediate relief. I'm not going to give that to you. Read that article, practice, and go to the next tip.
You Never Framed Your MessageThe key to getting through person(s) who have a different view than you, is to disrupt their frame. How do you do this? What are frames? Frames are context of how the information is presented. For example, the method I am writing this article right now, is in an unveiled condescending manner, designed to nudge your ego so that you will feel compelled to better yourself. The idea of changing the frame of a person is to manipulate the way information is presented, to increase the chances to influence, alter decision making and judgement about that information. For the same message, different people will have different frames, or context that is dependent on their belief and conditions. At the start of an interview, both the recruiter's and your frames, are different. Your job disrupt the interviewer's frame, to fit yours.
In the movie Pursuit of Happyness, Will Smith shows up at THE interview, the one that will make or break him, in an outfit akin to a homeless man, streaks of paint all over his face, jacket/body. He even reeked. The managers scoffed and asked him what would others in the company say if the managers even considered hiring somebody that didn't bother wearing a clean shirt to an interview.
"He must've had really nice pants", Will's character answered with a straight face
So how did Will use a joke to his advantage? The frame, or the context that the recruiters had of him upon seeing his disheveled appearance, was that he was not suitable for the position. And they clearly stated that his choice of clothing was a non-negotiable requirement for them; what would people say? However, Will managed to divert their attention to his quick wit, by delivering a well timed retort. This in effect, changed the context of the recruiters, to frame the conversation around Will's intellectual capability, and not his clothing. Of course it didn't hurt that the joke got a laugh or two in the room, as you know even in real life, it's hard to stay bored, mad, or sad with somebody who makes you laugh. Humor is a great frame disruptor. I don't advise you to go full on Bozo the Clown on a poor recruiter, but try to lighten the mood with an interesting comment, something that might tickle the person's funny bone.
If you read online on frame disruptors, there are many other techniques of influence, but for now, let's just be patient and get the recruiter smiling and ready to listen to you. I'd advise you to limit yourself to a joke or two max, and move on to the next tip.
You Were Always On the Receiving EndYou got into the room, you sat down, and you waited to be asked. You wait for the moment the recruiter finds a folly in your experience, and you figuratively wait for a Spanish Inquisition. Why?
What you should do is take charge of the situation. Shake the person's hand firmly. Smile and maintain eye contact. Acknowledge anybody else in the room, but focus on the decision maker. There's always a decision maker in the room. And ask that person a question.
"What, ask a question? That is absurd!", you say in disbelief. Why not? When I attend interviews, I often like to control the conversation, so I start with a question, that will lead the direction of the conversation the way I want it. For example, if I am interviewing for a General Manager's position in Uber, I would open with this question,
"So, how are you guys planning to retake market share from GrabCar in South East Asia? Seems to me they are eating your lunch."
It's a risky move, but a smart strategy. Not only have I disrupted the frames of the recruiter/managers, I have now made them be on the receiving end. If they are the people that I want to work with, they will come up with a quick intelligent answer, or they might just turn the question back to me, "We don't know, what do you think?"
And now I can elaborate on my well memorized answer, about my grand plans of trying to lower Uber Malaysia's overhead, tie-in with local partners, innovative ideas for marketing and be the first to market food delivery via UberEats, that Grab has not capitalized on. And if I've had my way, the total interview becomes my interview, where I ask the questions, and the recruiters are on the receiving end.
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Your success in an interview is always within your grasp. Do not concern yourself with the fact that there are hundreds of other applicants, that may or may not be exceedingly more qualified than you. Your battle is how you present yourself, how you frame your message and how you are able to control the conversation to your advantage. You can do wonders with the tools I just taught you, so please, do not despair and be ready for greater opportunities.
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Note about the author: Adrin Shafil is an engineer, currently working as a Drilling and Completions Manager in Malaysia. He finds that writing is a great stress relief tool and he finds joy in sharing his insights online and answering any questions from graduates, mid-career colleagues and even fellow managers. If you like his articles, please click 'like', share the article on your profile and connect or follow his feed for more great information and tips.
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Officially, we are past the half point of 2020 and with that the end of the second quarter. And what a quarter it has been. WTI prices plunged into negative territory (as low as -US$37/b) then recovered to US$40/b as OPEC+ moved from infighting to coordinating the largest crude production cut in history. In between, the Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc with the global economy, setting off a chain reaction within the oil world whose full impact is still unknown.
Opinions on a post-Covid oil world are divided. Some voices, the more optimistic ones, think that oil demand could recover to pre-Covid levels within a year or two. The more pessimistic ones think that this will never happen, that Covid-19 has hastened the trend away from fossil fuels to sustainable energy against the backdrop of climate change. Either way, this has thrown a spanner in the works of the giant, multi-billion oil and gas projects that were announced over the past two years as the energy world began to wake up from its post-2015 price crash investment hibernation. Those projects were made at a time when oil prices were at US$50-60/b. Since oil prices are now only at US$40/b, the current value and the future worth of these assets have now declined. Energy companies account for this by adjusting the value of their portfolios in accordance to the projected value of crude: an upward adjustment is known as a revaluation, and a negative one is known as an impairment.
This is a term that will crop up many times over 2020, as energy companies close their quarterly financial books and report their results to shareholders. The plunge in crude oil prices and the uncertain outlook for oil demand means that publicly-traded companies must account for this to their shareholders. Chevron was the first supermajor to book an impairment, in late 2019 when it took a US$10 billion hit to its oil and gas assets. It wasn’t the only one: firms all across the oil chain also reduced the value of their assets, from Repsol to Equinor.
Further impairments were made in April 2020 when the Q1 financial results were announced, mainly in response to the triggering of the OPEC+ price war (which saw crude prices halve from US$60/b to US$30/b) and the Covid-19 pandemic accelerating to a point where over half of the world’s population went into lockdown. But the major impact will come in Q2 2020, when the roil in the oil markets truly began to boil uncontrollably. BP has announced that it may take up to a US$17.5 billion impairment in its Q2 2020 financial results, while Shell has just admitted that it may have to shave US$22 billion from its asset value.
This has roots not just in the depressed demand for energy due to Covid-19, but also the ongoing conversation on climate change. Almost all supermajors have announced intentions to become carbon neutral by the 2050 timeframe. That may be good news for the planet, but it is bad news for the companies’ portfolio. Put simply, it means that some of the assets that they have invested billions in are now not only worth a lot less (due to Covid-19) but they may in fact be worth nothing at all, because climate change considerations mean that they will never be exploited. Challenging projects such as Total’s deepwater Brulpadda discovery in turbulent South African waters or Pertamina/ExxonMobil/Total/PTTEP’s beleaguered and complicated East Natuna sour gas asset in Indonesia may never be commercialised, either because of uneconomic prices or because they run counter to the goal of becoming carbon neutral. The Financial Times estimates that the amount of unviable or stranded hydrocarbon assets could reach as much as US$900 billion; that figure is pre-Covid, and could now become even higher.
There is one supermajor bucking the trend though. The biggest supermajor of all, in fact. Unlike its peers, ExxonMobil has not yet succumbed to impairments. If fact, it has not announced any negative revaluations at all over the past decade, even during the 2015 oil price crash. ExxonMobil claims that this is because it books the value of new assets ‘very conservatively’ and does not ‘adjust values to short-term price trends’, but critics say that it has an ongoing history of vastly overestimating its assets’ value. Along with Chevron, ExxonMobil does not disclose price assumptions in its financials. But unlike Chevron, ExxonMobil has not yielded to climate change through an official emissions target or asset revaluations.
On paper, that will make ExxonMobil look better than its supermajor brothers. But behind the scenes, this reluctance to admit that the future is less rosy than expected could be trouble waiting to be unleashed. Impairments are a necessary reality check: an admission by a company that things have changed and it is starting to adapt. Most have accepted that reality. ExxonMobil seems to be resisting. But even it is not immune. In pre-Q2 2020 results guidance that was just announced, ExxonMobil admitted that it expects to take a hit of some US$3.1 billion and slump to a second straight quarterly loss. In terms of Covid-19 impairments, that’s small. But it is, at least, a start.
Market Outlook:
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In this time of COVID-19, we have had to relook at the way we approach workplace learning. We understand that businesses can’t afford to push the pause button on capability building, as employee safety comes in first and mistakes can be very costly. That’s why we have put together a series of Virtual Instructor Led Training or VILT to ensure that there is no disruption to your workplace learning and progression.
Find courses available for Virtual Instructor Led Training through latest video conferencing technology.
The sale of a mere 5% stake in the oil world’s crown jewel, Saudi Aramco had captured the attention of the entire investment community last year. Pushing through after years of debate and delays, the sale on the Tadawul stock exchange valued Aramco at a whopping initial US$1.6 trillion. Investors were mainly connected Saudi individuals and wealthy families, with international buy-in limited as a planned parallel listing on the London or New York Stock Exchange fell through. Still, the deal was enough to unleash several thousand pages of speculation and opinion over potential liberalisation of the oil and gas complex in the Middle East, especially the upcoming post-oil and carbon-neutral environment.
Aramco may have captured all the main headlines, especially with its huge acquisition of fellow Saudi jewel SABIC but the true entity pushing the boundaries of privatisation and deregulation in the Middle East is elsewhere. Specifically, just east of Saudi Arabia, in Abu Dhabi – the largest and most influential of the seven emirates that make up the UAE.
The latest headline involving ADNOC, Abu Dhabi’s state oil firm, hasn’t really made the rounds beyond the industry’s eyes but it is crucial to understanding how the Middle East oil sector could adapt to the changing industry over the next few decades. Partnering with a consortium of six investors, ADNOC has sold a 49% stake in its ADNOC Gas Pipeline Assets subsidiary, retaining a 51% majority stake and control. The sale had been bandied around for over a year, seen as a sign of a gradual opening of a tightly controlled oil and gas region, and follows three other significant sales involving ADNOC. The first was in 2017, when ADNOC raised nearly a billion US dollars through an IPO of its fuels distribution unit on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, offering up 10% of its shares. Then late 2019, ADNOC partnered with Italy’s Eni and Austria’s OMV to nearly double oil refining capacity in Abu Dhabi to 1.5 mmb/d – the largest foreign participation in the Middle East downstream industry since the Shell Pearl GTL project in Qatar and Total’s Jubail refining and petrochemicals push over a decade ago. Around the same time, ADNOC also pocketed US$4 billion from US investment giants BlackRock and KKR through the sale of a 40% stake in its ADNOC Oil Pipelines subsidiary. And now it is the turn of ADNOC’s gas pipelines.
The chronology and regional aspect of ADNOC’s moves is interesting. While Aramco looks local, Abu Dhabi went abroad. The refining expansion involved established oil market players, Eni and OMV – and parallels a gradual unbundling of Abu Dhabi’s upstream concessions, where stakes have been offered to Total, PetroChina, Eni, Cepsa and India’s ONGC over the past five years. But the choice of new investors are now not from the industry. After the deep-pocketed BlackRock and KKR, ADNOC has once against turned to institutional investors for its latest, and largest, sale, with the US$20.7 billion gas pipeline and infrastructure deal going to a consortium consisting of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), Brookfield Asset Management, Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan Board, Singapore’s GIC sovereign wealth fund, NH Investment and Securities and Italy’s infrastructure operator SNAM. ADNOC called the deal a ‘landmark investment (that) signals continued strong interest in ADNOC’s low-risk, income-generating assets’. But it also illustrates two other points: institutional interest in strategic Middle East assets and the challenging environment within the industry because of Covid-19 that has led investment interest expanding to new capital that is currently reluctant to make risky bets in an unstable economic environment. So the choice of ADNOC’s safe assets and a captive domestic market is rather attractive.
ADNOC’s strategy differs from Aramco’s fundamentally. Where Aramco sold a stake of itself, ADNOC has parcelled out different parts of itself while keeping control of the main body intact. This is what Malaysia’s Petronas has done to a great degree of success, listing subsidiaries through IPOs and partnering with foreign investors on upstream/downstream projects, using the proceeds to finance a global expansion that now stretches across all continents. Replicating this strategy, as ADNOC looks to be doing, could pay dividends, particularly since ADNOC has a wider domestic base, as well as stronger export markets, than Petronas. Between Saudi Aramco and ADNOC, the OPEC duo seems to have kickstarted a liberalisation drive within the Middle East energy complex. Kuwait Petroleum and Bahrain’s BAPCO are already reported to be considering similar moves. Which model could this second wave follow: Aramco’s or ADNOC’s? Aramco’s is a shock-and-awe move, a potential wow factor at the size of any possible deal. But ADNOC’s more piecemeal approach could actually be far more stable and sustainable over time.
Market Outlook:
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End of Article
In this time of COVID-19, we have had to relook at the way we approach workplace learning. We understand that businesses can’t afford to push the pause button on capability building, as employee safety comes in first and mistakes can be very costly. That’s why we have put together a series of Virtual Instructor Led Training or VILT to ensure that there is no disruption to your workplace learning and progression.
Find courses available for Virtual Instructor Led Training through latest video conferencing technology.
We are excited to bring together the first ever Caribbean Oil & Gas Virtual Summit-2020 to be held from 16th - 18th September 2020.
Due to the current situation, this event is aimed at keeping the region's Oil & Gas community connected virtually and present an excellent networking opportunity all from the comfort of your office/home without the need to travel in these challenging times. There will also be a dedicated Virtual Exhibition focusing on the Operators, Prime Sub Contractors, Governments, Associations as well as the wider regional and international Oil & Gas Community with a particular focus on Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad.
The Conference & Virtual Expo would feature Suriname, Guyana, Bahamas, Barbados and Trinidad and participants from around the globe would present thought provoking keynotes, oral and poster presentations; displays of services, technology and investment opportunities will be available for both national and international companies.
You can also check the website www.carivs.com for further updates. We are expecting around 200 companies to be part of this conference. Both the Website and the Brochure will keep getting updated in coming days with further information about Speakers, Exhibitors, Sponsors, Content, Agenda etc.
Also I have attached a dropbox link. You will get access to the event platform through this link. This is in order for you to get an understanding of how the event platform works.
Let me know if you have any questions in the meantime
Stay Safe.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1an67vaywnbryo3/CARIVS%20Video%20Guide_4.mp4?dl=0