Maintenance Shops Training Advisor

West
US Navy, E-7

Orion International hit the nail on the head with the position they help me obtain with BP Arco. I spent 22-and-a-half years in the Navy and began transition leave in July. I will be officially out the end of September.

I attended one Orion hiring conference, which represented my first interview experience. And, while I bombed that interview, I learned a lot. The practice prepared me for the interview I had with BP Arco. While the position for which they were hiring (Maintenance Shops Training Advisor) represented quite a switch (I was looking primarily for a Maintenance Project Manager position), I came to realize this was a much better fit. I was better prepared for this interview and thought I did fairly well, certainly far better than the first.

In the meantime, I worked with two other recruiting agencies. I found that they either didn’t deliver near the amount of status updates that Orion did, or I rarely, if ever, heard from them after the initial contact. Several others that I contacted just simply never responded.

While waiting for a hiring decision with BP Arco, I kept thinking about a remark one of the interviewers made about changes being made at their company. With this in mind, I researched BP a little more and came across a report on the Process and Safety cultural change taking place there. As I read through the details, I found almost point-for-point comparison with what my Navy Command had been going through the last couple years.

This was a eureka moment. I had experience directly relating to the issues they are currently facing, and I hadn’t conveyed this in my interview. The weekend prior to their decision day, I started working on an Addendum to my Interview that would address this new information. I sent it in the morning of their decision date. They say I had been a close second but that the new information had decided it for them. I am starting my third week at BP Arco tomorrow, and everything is going great!