From our Partners: Career Story of Eero Hakola

Henrik Liimatainen

Could you first introduce yourself and tell us about your study background?

My name is Eero Hakola, and I currently work as a project manager in strategy consulting at EY-Parthenon. I started my studies as an engineering student way back until I figured out that I want to study business instead. I ended up doing my bachelor’s studies at the University of Tampere but then joined the masters program in Finance at Aalto University, from where I graduated in 2017.

Did you do internships or any permanent jobs during your studies? What did you learn from them?

During my studies, I worked in HR and finance functions at ISS. Later on I also gained experience friom business development within event management. I think my biggest learnings from those experiences relate to thinking and adopting the best practices from my colleagues. I have been incredibly lucky, being able to work with sharp people who have always challenged me, and taught by example. Similarly, passing on knowledge to others has helped me to reflect on what I understand. This boils down to a vast range of topics from communication and collaboration to project management. It’s not about being perfect in everything, but instead, you build on top of what you have learned before. Technical skills can be learned from books or YouTube, but implicit information and soft skills are learned from interaction with others.

Towards the end of your studies, did you have a clear career plan? What options were you considering?

I didn’t really have any concrete plans. Rather, typically for a finance student, I had a vague idea that I want to start my career either in consulting or corporate finance. Participating in different Aalto Finance (back then KY-Finance) events and excursions and talking to fellow students and alumni helped me to gain an initial understanding of the kind of work and organizations that could be interesting.

How did you end up working at EY and what appealed to you in the company?

I was drawn to consulting because the variety of different kind of projects and the exposure to different industries is something that is very peculiar to the consulting industry. Back in the day as a student I felt that the consulting path would challenge me the most, and provide the best environment for professional growth.

I applied for the EY Experience trainee program in the autumn of 2016, mostly because I was interested in working within M&A. At that time, I had originally applied to a different team within EY Strategy and Transactions business line, as EY-Parthenon didn’t have a trainee process ongoing. However, after discussing about my career aspirations and personal ambitions with the recruiters, I was quickly connected with the local strategy practice leader, and after talking with him and the team, I was invited to a separate interview process, and finally started as an intern in January 2017. I had no difficulties in accepting the offer as I had familiarized myself with the future teammates, the work, and other people at EY quite well already during the process. My experiences at EY-Parthenon have been very rewarding, and the people, culture, clients, steepening learning curve, and clear career trajectory in the firm have been some of the factors that have managed to keep me at the company for nearly 5 years now.

What are the most interesting and challenging aspects of your current job?

The client industries and needs to always keep changing. During my tenure at EY-P, I have gotten a chance to work with the leading Nordic private equity investors, e.g. Vaaka, Intera, MB and Norvestor, as well as publicly listed companies like Aktia. Different customer organizations have different needs, and especially with private equity clients the industries change from case to case. Similarly, I have enjoyed the fact that in my current job the engagements range from commercial due diligence to market expansion. Thus, I’ve become familiar with many different types of strategic issues that companies face.

There’s something very addictive in taking a deep dive into new industries and client issues, and then moving on to the next ones. Client needs differ quite much - they don’t ask simple questions they can find the information themselves from 3rd party data sources, but instead, they commonly need our help in understanding the deeper issues – which often means that we need to generate the data ourselves or structure the available data to identify and communicate the underlying insights, and also challenge the existing preconceptions.

Also, in strategy consulting, there’s always room to grow personally, and there are new roles to transit into. I have grown organically in the firm from an intern to consultant, and so on, acting now as a project manager. At each rank, you’re essentially delivering the same services, only from a different angle and with a different level of responsibility. Furthermore, the learning curve just keeps on steepening respectively at each rank.

What would be your advice for students or recent graduates interested in corporate finance or consulting?

Try different things and don’t make any decisions based on your preconceptions only. For me, all the excursions and company presentations I had seen during the studies had a fundamental role in defining what I want to do. They gave the first idea of all the possible opportunities out there. I have sometimes fallen as a victim of my preconceptions – for example, my initial image of EY and EY-Parthenon and the work they do was biased. It was based on the image I had constructed based on the typical ”Big4-image” as a legacy auditing organization, which has since proven to be highly incorrect.

And maybe as a final piece of advice, when you’re assessing your opportunities and companies you consider applying to – just do it if you’re interested. Don’t opt out of applying because you doubt your chances of getting in - let the recruiters do the decision rather than deciding for them yourself by not applying.

Finally, could you give us an example of a case you have worked on recently? What was your role and the day-to-day work like?

I recently supported Aktia in its acquisition of Taaleri wealth management business line, and acted as the lead consultant in assessing the strategic fit of the target. The key aspect of the deal was to understand what is underneath the hood. Asessed topics included themes like the underlying customer base, products, funds and different fee structures of the target. Naturally, a key part of a transaction of such scale was to support the management in estimating potential synergies from the transaction. When the signing date was getting closer, the focus of the work shifted on designing the operating model of the joint entity with the wider EY team.

The work itself was very hands on, and we had frequent workshops with the client leadership team around the key strategic themes, several interviews with the target leadership, several status calls with different process stakeholders, and naturally quite much desktop analysis and sparring with other team members. The case altogether included quite many streams from wider EY perspective as well, so there were quite a lot internal discussions with the different streams, e.g. corporate finance and financial due diligence teams.

As the transaction occurred in the asset and wealth management environment, the case altogether was one of those rare instances where studies in finance came in particularly handy.


Henrik Liimatainen is a former Editor-in-Chief of AFA Quarterly.