Pros
• Decent graduate salary of £32-33K • International exposure and varied experiences • Learning opportunities, with plenty of resources • Diverse pool of people from all regions • Flexible working
Cons
• The program is pivoting to becoming a backfilling method, rather than a ‘leadership’ program, leaving you with little more skills than a glorified internship • Menial duties, offering ‘carrot and stick’ philosophy to push productivity • Unrealistic number of online, prerecorded learning modules to complete, alongside generic compliance modules as well, whilst doing your ‘day job’ • Competition between ASPIREs is unhealthy and cultivates a toxic culture, creating playground bullying and childish rumours • Complete lack of transparency, very tactical and political culture pushed by middle management and program leaders (S&C) • No investment in accreditations or qualifications since GE split • Assignment leaders (ALs) for rotations are not monitored, or trained, pushing all accountability onto the ASPIRE, creating a ‘lucky dip’ dynamic, as rotation quality completely depends on your AL (some ASPIREs are like secretaries, or have no connect with ALs) • Baker Hughes praises loyalty, not ability • Vast inequalities between tracks and countries (not in line with standard of living), such as US Supply Chain ASPIREs earning $80K annually, Engineering ASPIREs not receiving the same salary % increase as other tracks, and even different product companies vary with experience, such as OFSE ASPIREs being limited to 1/no international rotations, whilst IET ASPIREs are able to have more than 1 • ‘Business needs’ are continually pushed on you to manipulate your own journey, prioritising immediate needs (short-termism and traditional O&G quarterly cost-focus) • Salary is not competitive once you roll-off into a full time position, and the positions are substandard - many have left after not being paid what they want, or being placed in a stagnant position (backfilling) • American-centric culture, prioritising CST timing for calls, ASPIRE is significantly better in Houston and there is a complete cultural ignorance sometimes, giving Asian and African employees nicknames as they don’t bother to learn someone’s foreign name, and expect them to work late hours (APAC work ridiculous hours, such as 4pm-11am, due to US-orientation)