30 October 2017, Muscat: As part of Petroleum Development Oman’s (PDO) continued commitment towards the employment and development of Omani nationals, the company signed a historic agreement with The Talent Enterprise, a leading international HR consulting and assessment company, to revamp its graduate hiring program.
The signing ceremony was held in PDO’s offices and on the momentous occasion, Mr. Hassan Barwani, Head of Recruitment and Omanisation said “as one of the leading employers in Oman, PDO is always setting the standards for best-in-class practices. Our graduate program is one of the most competitive to get selected for, and we’re looking forward to working with The Talent Enterprise to update our hiring process, to ensure that all young, bright Omani’s are provided with the best chance of working at PDO”. PDO currently receives thousands of applications and hires hundreds of Omani graduates every year across 14 streams, including engineering, operations, exploration, infrastructure, health & safety, people & change, finance and legal.
Mr. David Jones, CEO at The Talent Enterprise highlighted that “we are absolutely honoured to be selected as PDO’s partner for this critical project. Our mission at The Talent Enterprise is to help make the region’s workforce, especially the younger generation, more positive and more productive, and we are excited to work with PDO to bring the latest tools, technologies and processes for graduate recruitment”.
The agreement solidifies a long-term partnership between the two companies. Nusaiba Hakmani, PDO’s Head of Recruitment mentioned that “We had a very extensive, competitive process to choose our partners for this project, and The Talent Enterprise clearly stood out in terms of having innovative tools and methods, with are localised and designed for the next generation. To hire and develop a 21st century workforce, we need 21st century tools which our younger Omani population can relate to. We will be launching our new process in time for the new academic cycle in 2018.”
The scope of the project includes introducing psychometric assessments as part of the selection process, as well as revamping the current assessment centres. The Talent Enterprise will be training over 200 staff at PDO on assessor skills as part of their commitment to build internal capacity at PDO.
Radhika Punshi, Managing Director at The Talent Enterprise noted that “we have the largest team of in-house occupational psychologists and assessment experts at The Talent Enterprise, and we’re proud to have developed the region’s first and only psychometric tools with extensive local norms and international repute”. She added that “our assessment methods are scientific and predictive of future performance, yet simple and engaging for candidates. We’re confident that our work with PDO will lead to significant demonstrable impact in terms of their graduate program.”
End of Press Release
