Even though many of our graduates will have progressed in their careers since completing a case study, they are still of interest to students who wish to gain an understanding of the world of work.

I provide finance support to one of our assets (a 30 year old oil producing platform in the North Sea): developing business plans and strategy and managing day-to-day business.

Main areas of responsibility are:

Joint Venture Management
- Co-ordinate and manage the relationship with external business partners, building alignment to support approval of BP proposed activity
- Manage communications between internal and external stakeholders (BP management, joint venture owners, authorities, regulators, government)

Commercial Operations
- Provide economic and planning analysis - strategy development, long term planning, investment decisions
- Support the optimisation and implementation of commercial agreements

Desk based: draft and review management briefings; economic modelling; summarise business cases; prepare presentations; communicate with joint venture partners

Meetings: partner meetings; review business cases; strategy workshops; team meetings.

Developing business cases may take hours for simple drilling options or several years for projects where there are technical, commercial, economic or logistical challenges. My role is to contribute to the multi-disciplinary team (subsurface, operations, wells, projects, procurement) effort to challenge assumptions, test alternative scenarios, identify sources of value in order to find an achievable and economically attractive investment proposition.

Tangible sense of purpose: oil and gas touches almost every part of the world and everyone in it.

Diverse work: one week preparing for management meetings, next developing business case for major new development, the next developing long term plan.

Key integrating role across all parts of the business: work with all teams: operations, drilling, subsurface. In this way, I have a unique position of understanding the whole business. Despite lacking a deep technical understanding (e.g. in engineering or geology) I provide a valuable contribution to the technical teams by bringing them together and helping them to understand the wider impacts of their work.

I deal with big numbers! I work on billion dollar assets and projects. The decisions I am involved in are of a significant consequence (to regional energy markets, to global supply chain, to local labour markets, to governments). My personal impact and influence over business outcomes can be quantified, e.g. the day I earned my annual salary three times over after spotting a commercial lever that was not being utilised on a sales contract!

Technical understanding required (learnt on the job), such as: pressure dynamics, drilling operations, geology.

Energy is an inherently political resource: I had a desire to understand how the risks and rewards are shared and to support the responsible development of natural resources.

I was also looking for a sound business education: working with one of the largest companies in one of the most profitable industries suggested that BP would offer this.

Intermediate maths competency: specifically statistics and probabilities.

Most work is excel based so familiarity working in excel an advantage (I learnt on the job).

Presentation skills: maturity, confident working with new people and those with seniority.

Communication: need to be effective at working with people from very different technical backgrounds (engineers, offshore staff, management).

A lot. Oil industry specific (petroleum economics, introduction to oil and gas) and finance specific (financial foundations, economic evaluation, business case preparation, planning and performance management, many others). On the job coaching from team members.

Media agency executive, 4 months travelling

BP 6 years based in London, Norway, Aberdeen

I will commence a master's degree in Public Policy at Georgetown University in 2013.

Create a network: use adults you know to suggest contacts you can speak with about career direction. Use these people to test ideas and paths to getting the job you want and also just to practise articulating your career objectives ahead of making contact with employers.

Be assertive and active: you may have to create opportunities and open doors rather than hoping to find an open one. My first job was a result of a follow up call to the HR department who promptly searched for my CV in the pile; without that, it might never have been read.

Use STAR in responses on application forms to describe: situation, task, action, result - and be punchy, this isn't the time for verbose essay answers!

Get someone from a similar background to the company you are applying to to review and provide feedback on your application forms and CV.

University is a wonderful opportunity to explore your interests and follow your passions. It is more difficult after university to do this. Make the most of all fascinating and inspiring people around you and don't worry about deadlines. You can study for a degree any time but you will only be at university once.