bp Business Analyst Interview Questions
& Process

The interview felt pretty chill and welcoming. We started with just chatting to get comfortable, then they looked over my resume, and after that, they hit me with a bunch of questions.

Applied through a referral for a role in I&E in Intelligent Operations. Was notified about a one hour panel interview, never spoke with a recruiter. Panel interview was one hour long with two interviewers. Interview was more of an interrogation rather than a conversation about exploring mutual fit. It was a very cold experience where the interviewers just told me about themselves shortly then jumped straight into asking why I wanted to work for bp. Zero interest in me as a person or learning about my journey to where I am in my career. They use interview guides so they just read questions from a script, so I felt like it was hard to connect with them. The questions were very dense. They would ask “tell me a time when..” and then all in one breath, “did you influence… , how did you deal with…, what was the outcome…, what did you learn…” so it all felt super overwhelming. One of the panel interviewers experienced “technical difficulties” and didn’t have their camera on so there also was an added challenge of trying to “read the room”. Overall, I think I dodged a bullet. Not sure I want to work for someone who interrogated me about how innovative and creative I was when leaders in this group couldn’t dial into a teams call via the web when their Teams app wasn’t working quite right. To top it off I got a rejection email on Saturday that read “you weren’t successful..” which really added insult to injury. First, please stop sending rejection emails on the weekend, especially when the expectation is set I wouldn’t hear anything until the following week, and two, I would consider rewording this language. I spent hours preparing for this interview before regular working hours so that it didn’t interfere with my current role. I was successful in that I did the best I could with the information and time I had to explain why I was a good fit for the role.

It was a long process, applying from outside can feel daunting. It broke down into three parts: First, a phone interview to go over basics, real softball questions. Second, a face-to-face with the team, a panel of four. Third, a casual lunch to meet more team members, just light chats. Doing good research was key, I looked into the company history, who the CEO was, and past M&A activity. Nothing too wild. I think having good questions to ask made the difference. I spent time mapping out relevant topics and prepared some smart talking points for the panel interview. Without that, I'd have just been another candidate.