What happens when two former AAPG Asia Pacific region presidents meet in Europe? First, they like to meet each other around food. They also like to talk about AAPG and share their experiences with other members. In the last meeting on May 10, 2012, Peter Lloyd and Herman Darman got together with AAPG Young Professional of the Netherlands. A Chinese Restaurant, in the China Town of the Hague, Netherlands, was chosen as the venue as it had an Asian atmosphere. The Young Professionals in the Netherlands is led by Edyta Frankowicz, who organized a number of informal gathering to discuss topics related to careers in petroleum geosciences. This meeting was attended by people with different nationalities (British, Polish, German, Dutch and Indonesian), representing different companies like Shell, Schlumberger, PanTerra and Dataco.

At this meeting, the attendees discussed different ways of getting jobs within companies. Each company has different ways of recruiting their staff. Larger companies have longer processes compare to smaller companies. Recruitment processes in the ‘old days’ were also simpler compared to the common industry practice these days. Differences in career paths were also discussed during the dinner. Service companies, which heavily rely on technology, have longer technical career paths compare to the managerial career path. This means experienced technical people are valued higher than the manager. It is different with the operators as they have longer managerial career paths, and the technical people are generally supporting the managers.

Previously, in 2008, Peter and Herman visited TU Delft, a university in the Netherlands as part of the Visiting Geoscientists Program. This chapter was the first AAPG Student Chapter in the Netherlands. During this visit, Peter and Herman shared their industrial experiences and experiences with different student chapter activities in Asia Pacific. They plan to meet again sometime in August this year. Let’s see what is going to happen next.

[Adrienne Pereira]