Position was listed on the universities career website - I followed the link to the Shell's corporate site and filled out the online application. A day passed and I was sent a link to an online personality test that asked me to rate myself against certain character traits. Another day passed and I was asked to complete the second online portion which consisted of two sections: one to select the best approach to a given problem, and a second section that was heavy on reading graphs and calculating percentages. I've heard from other students that you can 'fail' either of these online portions and be discarded as an applicant. I was offered to select a time for my interview when the company came to the campus at the beginning of October.
My one-hour interview was surprisingly high ranked in the company and I felt much more intimidated than I had been when interviewing for similar positions. She started by explaining her own background in the company and the format of the interview. We jumped right into the behavioral questions - 45 minutes of 'give me an example when'. The interviewer scribbled everything I said and allocated about 10 minutes for each question so be prepared to talk and keep talking. I had four questions total. With each question she asked she would ask a follow up like 'and how did your teammates feel about your suggestion?' or 'did you feel that that was the best course of action?'. Shell really seems to want you to understand their special CAR acronym - your capacity, achievement, and relationships and specifically asked me to use the pronoun 'I' when giving my answers.
I was then asked questions that she told me weren't going to be used in the selection process, like 'Where division would you like to work for in Shell?' and 'Do you have a geographical preference?'. However, one of the questions was 'Why would you like to work for Shell?' so I figure if you don't have a good answer for that one there might be some eyebrows raised.
I had ~10 minutes left to ask questions and I used them all.
A few days after the interview I was sent an email telling me that I am in their candidate pool. Two weeks passed and I got a phone call from Houston extending an offer.
