ExCEL-1: PETRONAS Digital's Young Graduate Programme (YGP)

PETRONAS Digital’s Young Graduate Programme, or as they call it YGP, is a holistic 18-month development program with projects or division-specific assignments that provides a strong career foundation and introduction to PETRONAS ICT business functions for young professionals. PETRONAS Digital has co-hosted with Student Development from the School of Computing to organize a virtual career talk show on Webex. It was held on the 14^th of June 2022 at 2:30 P.M. The graduate attributes in this program are communication skills, leadership and teamworking skills, adaptability, and global citizenship. The event started off with a welcoming speech from the Chair of the School of Computing, UTM, Prof. Ts. Dr. Wan Mohd Nasir bin Wan Kadir followed by the welcoming speech by the HR manager of PETRONAS Digital, Mr. Nizam Ahmad. After the welcoming speech, Ms. Berdene, the emcee from PETRONAS Digital, introduced to the audience about the Young Graduate Programme. In the intro, we learned that the program not just only creates a job opportunity for the fresh graduates, but through this program, they are also given the opportunity to participate in a structured upskilling scheme. Other than that, there are also a few more perks with the YGP, that is, they will have a learning buddy who will guide you throughout the structured upskilling, performance coaching, leadership building, immersion in digital projects, and gaining energy industry knowledge. Next, it will be the sharing sessions from the ICT team of PETRONAS Digital. First, we have Mr. Roman Kvaska, who is the head of software engineering at PETRONAS Digital. He shared that during the next 10 years, the demand for software engineering will increase by 22% globally. Software engineering is expanding in the scope and the field of cloud computing and big data has grown in recent years due to the exponential growth of new technologies. Mr. Roman also shared the required skills as a software engineer, that is, analytic thinking and problem-solving skill, programming skills, productivity skills, understanding of products (SDLC), and lifelong learning. Next, we have Mr. Khairul Nazri Lokman as the head of data platform services. PETRONAS data and ecosystem is growing rapidly and is now handled by more than 400 data engineers in the digital group. The roles of a data engineer can be a data analyst, business intelligence engineer, data modeler, data quality engineer, big data engineer, data architect, or data engineer. They also prepare their engineers for the future such as giving them instructor-led training, certifications, masterclass series, on-job assignments, skill assessments, and self-paced online learning. Last but not least, we have Dr. Assad Abdollahzadeh, head of data science. He shared that data is just like crude oil for us. When it is refined, the value will go up exponentially, making an impact on the business industry. After the sharing by the ICT, Ms. Berdene further explained the requirements for the YGP. YGP now only accepts Malaysians with a CGPA of 3.00 or above and is a fresh graduates with less than two years of working experience. After that, we have a group photo and the event ended at around 4:30 pm.

In this virtual career talk, the first thing I learned is that for every job interviews, do some research on the company you are going for interview such as their history, goals, objectives, motto, and other information related to the company. This would greatly help during the interview process. Other than that, I also learned that we should always speak up whenever we have ideas or opinions. This can greatly help the company to generate more ideas. Even if your idea is just average, other people might be able to further improvise your idea to make it even better. Be it if you are still an intern or fresh graduate that just entered a new company, companies out there need new people to give new ideas. Next, I learned about sustainable methodology. “A progressive energy and solutions partner enriching lives for sustainable future.” Normally when we talk about sustainable energy, we would always think about crude oil or electricity. But we need to know that it does not only limit to the energies we use. It can be social, economy, environment, or even politic. Everything we see and everything we use may be outdated one day, this is when we need to find alternatives or new ideas to continue. Besides sustainable methodology, I have learned that during this era, technologies evolve very rapidly and exponentially. Some roles or positions in the past may become irrelevant today or being changed to other title. New roles or positions will also be introduced during the process. Compared to other professions, it is expected the demand for software development jobs to have a growth of 22% in the next 10 years. In the immediate future, software development will also be needed to be versatile and be able to operate anywhere and anytime. Finally, the most important thing to be remembered is to be nice to everyone and trust the process. A company without trust can function smoothly without hesitations and drawbacks.