I visited the Shell booth at my career fair and was chosen for a 1-1 interview. The interviewer was really nice and I felt like it went really well.
The next few weeks were hard because the process took so long. I received other offers before even hearing back from Shell about whether I made it to the next round (SRD). I had to email my school's recruiter and found out that I passed the first interview and they wanted to bring me out for an SRD, they just were having trouble scheduling it and finding space for me. I felt like I kind of had to bother her about getting things done. It was really frustrating. However, she worked hard to find me a spot and I flew out to Houston after being given a week's notice.
The first day was an information session about the SRD and what would happen. The HR woman (SUPER nice) went over what we would be doing (technical interview, case study, and group discussion) and made us feel really comfortable. We did a practice case study to get more comfortable with it and it really did help me know what to say for the next day. After the information session was dinner at a restaurant in our hotel with some young Shell employees who talked to us about how it was to work at Shell.
The actual interview day was comprised of three parts:
Case Study: You get some background info about a fictional Shell plant in a fictional country during the info session that you have to read over the night before. During the actual day, they give you more information (consisting of graphs, emails, newspaper articles) and you have to read these and identify the key issues that are facing this plant (keeping in mind the priorities of Shell as a company) as well as the short, medium, and long term goals for this plant. You have to do kind of a presentation where you discuss what you found to be the key issues, etc to evaluators who are pretending to be your bosses who are flying in for an update. The evaluators are really nice and based on what you say are your key issues they ask you questions like "how are you planning on implementing this?" and you have to explain and discuss with them their questions. This lasted probably 30-45 mins and it was probably the most "intense" part of the day (because there was so much information analysis) but it wasn't bad if you focused on what Shell would do as a company.
Technical Interview: Since I was interviewing for a technical position, I had to present on a technical project I had worked on in the last 3 years. This was easy because it was me talking about my project for 10 mins and then them asking me per-determined questions about it, so nothing technical (how did you overcome problems? stuff like that) The interviewers were really nice and actually interested in my project and impressed.
Group Discussion: This part of the day happened after lunch and my group was split into two groups for the discussion (since there were 11 of us- we had groups of 5 and 6). First off, you are assigned to a committee looking out for certain interests. Then, you read about projects that your committee is proposing and how much each project would cost. After the 5 mins of alone reading, you meet up with 1 or 2 other people in your committee and decide which are the most important projects to invest in (you only have a certain amount of money and cant invest in all the projects). Finally, you meet with other committees and discuss your projects and why they are important. The committees have to kind of convince the other committees that their projects are important while also looking out for the good of the entire community. There are evaluators watching as you discuss with your committee and then as the committees come together. They are looking for how you perform in a group and how you can influence people. However, they are not looking for how you can force your opinions on others. This was kind of weird bc the evaluators do not talk, they just write what they see.
After the SRD they told us that we would know by the next week whether we were successful (my SRD was on a Friday). I got a call saying I was successful Monday morning and also an offer. The turnaround time is great, probably because I had another offer deadline coming up that week.
I hope this helps! I was really nervous about my SRD when it was coming up and long posts like this made me feel less panicked.