012 The Bath Perspective Spotlight Corporate Partner: BP Jon O'Sullivan BP Biofuels MSc in Management with Marketing 2000 On completion of his MSc at Bath, Jon went straight onto the BP graduate commercial development programme, a three-year scheme in which Jon worked in three different commercial roles across BP. He now works for BP Biofuels and joined BP's Bath campus team one year ago. Jon explains about the link between BP and its chosen UK university partners. How did the link between BP and its chosen UK universities develop? Approximately three years ago BP undertook a review to focus its graduate recruitment activities in the UK. This new strategy centred around enhancing BP's relationships with a small group of core universities and as a result teams comprising four to six alumni, now working in BP, were appointed to each core university. These teams have been granted resources to develop these relationships including financial, Human Resources and time away from the office. Each core university was chosen on the basis of a strong track record with BP, e.g. where many successful graduate recruits have come from recently, and league tables regarding which are the strongest universities in areas particularly relevant for BP such as engineering and business. What does BP hope to achieve from the Partnerships? Primarily we are looking at improving graduate recruitment into the core areas of our business. We realise that recruiting the best graduates is not just about contacting them when they graduate so we are looking at an ongoing relationship developed throughout their time at university. BP has a central graduate recruitment function which has looked into touchpoints throughout the degree, aiming to give BP visibility with the best students from the first year right through to the final year. There is often a clearflowfrominternships,summer projects, trading games and recruitment to assessment centres to job offers with BP. What is BP's link with the School of Management? BP entered into a Corporate Partnership with the School of Management about eight months ago. The University of Bath is strong in the engineering and business departments ­ both of which are particularly appealing to our business. The Corporate Partnership scheme that the School has developed is an excellent and very easy way to show the tangible links between BP and the School. It helps that the scheme uses business speak that is easy for us to relate to and it is an efficient type of partnership in which you can clearly see what you put in and what you get out. I have been pleased with the structure of the Partnership scheme asithasbeenveryflexibleandwehavebeen