BP Skills Refinery goes global

BP, a leading graduate recruiter, announced today the 2019 global launch of its Skills Refinery, an online portal and community which aims to improve student employability and, in a rapidly-changing world, prepare them for the jobs of the future.

This is the second year of the Skills Refinery which started in 2018 with a soft-launch in five countries – Australia, Azerbaijan, Singapore, the UK, and the US. Participation in the 2019 Skills Refinery is now open to students around the world.

BP’s Skills Refinery was established to help students develop skills in five core areas – critical problem solving, innovation, influence and communication, cognitive flexibility, and emotional intelligence. It was developed using the latest digital technologies to create an online gamified portal containing resources that will help students enhance these professional skills whilst also having fun.

Students can learn the science behind thoughts and actions and learn how to use it to their advantage in their careers and at university.

Additionally, the Skills Refinery allows students to test themselves, take interactive quizzes to build their skills, track their progress, and discover how the five areas it covers apply to the professional world.

As members of its community enhance their skills and advance through the skills modules, they will find out more about the video challenge and the global challenge prize. Once participants have completed learning in all five skills areas, they will be eligible to enter the global challenge.

For the global challenge, students will be asked to form teams to solve a challenge and will compete via video submission at the national level. National level winners will go on to compete against each other at the global level and the winners will receive a prize that will be announced later in the year.

In last year’s global challenge participants were required to answer how the world and BP can make the energy transition a reality, using one of the skills they learned from the Skills Refinery. The overall winners were students from Azerbaijan, who won attendance to the 2019 Summit, held in London, UK on 22–25 October, where they reflected on their experiences and what they learned by taking part in the Skills Refinery.

The One Young World Summit is an annual event organised by the UK-based NGO One Young World, which brings together talented young minds from around the globe, as well as world leaders, to help solve pressing global issues. 

Julia Harvie-Liddel, Group Head of Talent Acquisition at BP, said: “At BP, we recognise that in the rapidly evolving world, students need to ‘future proof’ their skills and better equip themselves to be successful. The disruption of digitalisation and technology is quickly revolutionising the workplace, transforming businesses and how they operate. Through the Skills Refinery, we want to help students to be as ready as they can be to take on these new challenges. While we may not know what the jobs of the future will be right now, the Skills Refinery has been developed to give students the underlying skills-base to be prepared for them.”

The Skills Refinery is free to join and open globally to first- and second- year university students in full-time education that are over the age of 18. Currently it is only available in English. The global challenge is open to all Skills Refinery participants who complete all five skills modules.

Interested parties can join the Skills Refinery by visiting the website.