How Shell finds student world's brightest sparks: RECRUITMENT: Become an oil executive for five days and prove you can hit paydirt. Peter Wise watched 40 undergraduate hopefuls face the challenge:

Thursday, Jan 08, 2004

Tension ismounting in half a dozen basement rooms at a hotel in southern Portugal as a long day's exertion wears into late evening. Young men and women tap agitatedly at laptop computers; others stand at whiteboards calculating million-dollar sums with felt-tip pens. Small groups huddle in intense discussion.

For five days, 40 engineering, financial, legal and other specialists from 10 European countries have been racing against the clock to devise a five-year business plan for drilling, refining and marketing the offshore oil resources of a small country in the Indian Ocean. The next day they will make a pitch to three hard-nosed shareholders for Dollars 40m in investment funds.

"Stress levels are at a maximum," says an aide to the team. "They're eating their way through crisps and biscuits like there's no tomorrow."

In this deviation from the caffeine and tobacco that traditionally fuel late-night business sessions lies a clue to the unusual nature of the whole enterprise. Gourami, the nation under intense scrutiny, cannot be found on any map. And the strategy for developing its energy resources is being drawn up not by hard-bitten corporate executives but by final-year university students with no business experience.

The next morning three senior managers from Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy group, will hear the students put forward proposals to buy out the Gourami operations of a rival oil company, sharply cut staff levels in some local divisions and invest heavily in new refining techniques. But the real issue is not successful policies for a non-existent developing country but the competitiveness of Shell's recruitment policy.

"Gourami is the fictional setting for a business challenge we have developed over the past 10 years as an important tool in the war to recruit the undergraduates with the strongest potential," says Navjot Singh, global marketing manager of Shell's recruitment division. "The course has been extremely successful in providing us with a constant stream of talented individ-uals."

The Gourami business challenge was originally designed as a technical case study but has since grown to incorporate the commercial, human resources and legal aspects of running a global energy company. "The main aim is to give undergraduates a taste of what it's like to work for an oil group and to see for themselves how they would cope at the sharp end of an international business," says Mr Singh.

Forty final-year students from disciplines ranging from chemical engineering to marketing are brought together, supposedly in the small Islamic state of Gourami but in fact, in the latest European version of the challenge, in a large hotel in the Algarve. They are given five days to prepare a strategic 2005-2010 business plan for Shell's operations in this imaginary nation, which comes complete with a detailed political, geological and social history.

The students are divided into five teams, each responsible for a specific project. These can involve the management of offshore oil and gas discoveries, making strategic decisions about refineries and planning how to market and supply products.

Each individual project has to be co-ordinated into a coherent, long-term strategy. At the culmination of the challenge, each team has to convince three tough-minded senior Shell managers playing the role of shareholders to put up the money to fund their schemes.

"It is a very tough challenge that really puts students in touch with the reality of how a company makes things happen," says Paul van Ditzhuyzen, a former vice-president of Shell Latin America who has been with the group for 30 years and regularly acts the part of a shareholder. "They are working to professional standards under great pressure to draw up plans that are economically justified, politically sensible and socially responsible."

A Gourami challenge is held each year in Europe, the US and one other location. The students participating in Portugal were selected from about 700 candidates who applied after the event was canvassed at a number of universities across Europe. From each group of students selected to participate, about 90 per cent go on to apply for a job with Shell and about half are successful.

For Shell, the challenge provides a 25 per cent reduction in the average recruitment cost per undergraduate and, most importantly, a significant advantage in the battle to recruit the best students from a steadily diminishing pool of science undergraduates.

In the UK, for example, the number of chemical engineering undergraduates has fallen 32 per cent over the past five years, from 6,415 in the 1998-1999 academic year to 4,335 in 2002-2003. The number of students studying geology, mechanical engineering, physics and chemistry, all vital disciplines for Shell, has dropped by between 5 and 13 per cent over the same period.

"The fact that Shell's intake of technical graduates in the UK has increased by 262 per cent over the same time frame is an indication of the size of the challenge we're facing," says Mr Singh.

While the available pool of undergraduates decreases, the number of companies competing to attract the cream of the crop is increasing. New technology companies such as Nokia and Cisco Systems are proving as enticing to the best students as the more traditional choices of international consumer goods corporations, investment banks and leading consultancies.

The mechanics of recruitment is also changing, with the internet playing an increasingly important role. More than 90 per cent of the job applications that Shell receives are now made electronically.

Above all, says Mr Singh, the nature of what today's best students want from a professional career has altered significantly, with the traditional values of job security and good pay losing priority.

"Young people are seeking jobs in which they can achieve the right work/life balance and ensure their own personal development," he says. "They are less likely to want to commit themselves to a long stay at one particular company. They want a clear idea of how their career might develop and they want to work for companies with values that they can identify with."

In the Gourami challenge, students are faced with ethical dilemmas, political sensitivities and engineering problems designed to give them a taste of Shell's corporate culture and the group's business principles.

Sarah Nouwen, a Dutch law student from the University of Utrecht, says the experience gave her un-expected insights into the social and ethical issues involved in running a business. "One of my specialities is human rights and I tended to see big business in a purely negative light. The Gourami challenge has enabled me to see the conflict between shareholders and stakeholders from both sides," she says.

The experience of working in teams with colleagues from different disciplines and backgrounds was the most rewarding aspect of the challenge for most of the participants.

"Hard science students can be dismissive of what they see as 'fluffy' disciplines like human resources management and vice-versa," says Claire Gould, a mechanical engineering undergraduate at Imperial College in London. "Dealing with the 'real-life' challenges of Gourami made us all aware of the value of other skills and aptitudes and the need to work as a team."

Her experience in the make-believe realm of Gourami has also given a new focus to her real-world ambitions.

"I've decided I want to work on an oil rig," she says. "I just haven't worked out how to tell my mum yet."

By PETER WISE