New Master’s students were welcomed into the School of Business community at the Welcome Evening

Like last year, Aalto University School of Business' Career Services, Alumni Relations and KY invited all new Master’s students to the Welcome Evening. The idea of the event held on Monday 3.9. at the School of Business Main Building was to give the Master’s students the opportunity to get to know their community – especially the alumni graduated from the Business School. The event was attended by about 150 Master's students and around thirty alumni, who represented different degree programs.

The event was opened by the Head of External Relations at the School of Business Jonna Söderholm, who presented the activities of her unit.

“I recommend you to ask our Alumni Relations Coordinator Emilia Nevalainen about the mentoring programme and the alumni activities in general. Our Career Services Managers Tanja Makkonen and Annemari Rautio in turn will tell you about matters related to finding employment, including CV clinics where one can get advice on updating the CV, as well as work placements, which are an excellent opportunity to gain relevant work experience for the future. Tommi Vihervaara is our expert in The customised student projects concept. This corporate collaboration offers students the opportunity to work on solving current challenges faced by corporate business”, said Jonna Söderholm.

The active School of Business Alumni community has a lot of valuable information on work and employment

Bernardo Clementino, alumni who majored in strategy and currently works as a M&A Manager at the auditing company EY, told the students about his experiences during the studies.

“I recommend applying to the CEMS programme or the ITP summer program. They are both amazing. Personally I didn’t apply to CEMS because it includes an exchange period at a foreign university, which is of course a wise choice for Finnish students, but I myself as a Brazilian already felt like I was doing an exchange here at the School of Business. When possible, it’s a good idea to do your Master’s thesis for a company, as it is an easy way to get a job from the same company after graduation or even before that”, Bernardo said.

Bernardo also recommends using the School of Business' Career Services. Many students have found a job through the CareerWeb portal and you can also get consultancy to update your CV. School of Business Graduates have a lot of opportunities in the labour market and you can talk with Tanja and Annemari and the alumni about them.

Also Petri Aalto-Setälä represented the alumni in the event. Petri, who studied information systems and graduated at the end of last year, works as an analyst at Deloitte. According to Petri, during the studies it is worthwhile to improve also the "softer" skills, such as presentation skills, in addition to the actual content-related knowledge. “Working life requires you to be ready to throw yourself into things and to take responsibility. You’ll constantly encounter new situations and you’ll survive them, as long as you take action”, Petri said.

The Welcome Evening is a part of the Master’s students’ orientation week. Another event increasing the community spirit is the Meet Your Community (MYC) event, which every spring gathers together the first-year bachelor’s students, or walruses, and the alumni. The idea behind both of these events is to encourage new students to create networks, learn new things and find interesting career paths starting from their very first day.

Further infomation:
alumni-biz@aalto.fi,  career-biz@aalto.fi