Akanksha Patel is a 5th year student in the Department of Electronics and Communications. Read on as she recounts her experience of working with Schlumberger, Mumbai during the summers of 2016.

Making it there

Schlumberger’s selection process had 2 rounds. The first round was a resume based selection. The second one was a the personal interview. For the first round, Schlumberger looks for all round performance of a student. Having 2-3 projects on the resume and some involvement in extracurricular will get you through. In my case, having a sports background definitely helped.

For personal interviews, there’s one thing that Schlumberger does differently than others. Before entering the room we were given some time to prepare our answer to the following: introduce yourself, what do you know about Schlumberger and why Schlumberger. The interview began after that and I was mostly asked questions based on my resume, nothing in particular to either electronics or the oil-field. However, this was not the case for Earth Sciences students. They were also asked some questions related to their field of study.

Work

Details about the firm: Schlumberger is the world’s largest oilfield service provider.It offers both summer and winter internship programs. Summer internship used to be of 2 months but the company recently changed the duration of the intern to 1 month. It is divided under various segments and my intern was under the Wireline segment.

Aim of the internship: The aim of the internship was to get us acquainted with the work of a field engineer. Since mine was not a field job, I did not get a chance to actually see the work done by a wireline engineer but I did get a feel of it by interacting with the engineers of the firm.

Day to day work: Our first few days of the intern went in knowing about the base and learning about the different labs that the segment had. By the end of the week we were assigned our intern projects and we majorly worked on that for the next 3 weeks. Apart from the projects, Schlumberger has introduced a new online learning system known as the e-mentor. It has full 4 week study material and task sheets that were supposed to be done alongside the project.

Work culture at the firm: The working hours of the intern depended highly on the segment we were assigned to. For Wireline Segment, it was from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm. Since, I my intern was at the base and not on the rig, the nature of work was relaxed for me, but that’s definitely not the case for a field interns. People at the place were very friendly and helpful. Many a times they had stepped aside form their own work to help us out. There was no buddy system rather we all were reporting directly to the Field Segment Managers.

Experience gained: I learned a lot about the oil-field services even though I could not visit a rig. We also attended the Schlumberger Injury Prevention Program as a part of the intern. Moreover, I got a chance to work on an android based project, which was something totally new to me.

Summing up and advice to people gunning for it

As the oil prices have recently dropped the whole oil and gas industry went in the downfall and Schlumberger is no exception. I felt that this is not the right time to join the company as the drop in the oil prices has affected them terribly. As a result, the company has entered into a cost cutting phase, to such an extent that the stipend of the internship was decreased from Rs.30,000 to Rs. 10,000 and accommodation was not offered to the students who had a place to stay in Mumbai (IIT Bombay students). During my stay there I have seen people getting fired and resigning. Though the employees are quite optimistic about the rise in the oil prices but that’s going to take time. So my advice would be not to join until you’re really interested in this field.

And if you’re still willing to go for it, build a strong resume. Present your work in the right way. Get it proofread by your seniors and friends. And for the interview, prepare about the things you’ve mentioned in your resume, your projects or earlier internships and be confident. That got me through.

If you have an internship experience you’d like to share, get in touch at watchout.iitr@gmail.com