In a period when the petroleum industry is in need of highly qualified, flexible, multicultural, proactive and innovative employees to accept the current challenges, the reasonable question that each manager or HR specialist raises is how to integrate quickly fresh and not well experienced graduates into company's processes so that they become experts very soon. Many energy companies create special succession planning programs for this, mentioning also such an important part as mentoring. Today the idea of traditional mentoring can be also reconsidered. As for its first meaning, mentoring programme helps young professionals to get new knowledge directly on the job from senior petroleum experts by knowing more about their personal and professional experience, specific cases and mistakes, methodological and management skills. However, since the digitalization of all processes and operations has been much developing nowadays, mentees that have more flexible and adaptive mindset can become good "mentors" to their senior colleagues in using social networks and finding information there, introducing new apps, ICT programs, new approaches. This 2 way learning engage both a mentor and a mentee information sharing, highlights their value and eliminates generation barriers. As a result, the energy company benefits from the age diversity and has more positive internal climate as well as a pool of talented and motivated experts.
As a good international example, since 2010 the World Petroleum Council has been developing its Mentoring Programme for students and young professionals under 35 that allowed several hundreds of participants to get access to senior industry leaders, discuss energy issues and draw upon their experiences, expectations and suggestions. The more this kind of approach is supported and shared on a national level in governmental, commercial and academic organizations, the better base there will be for the petroleum sector to quickly adapt to the current uncertainties.
