Miina Rajakangas - Lead Business Developer

When applying for a summer job, not many people consider that accepting a job can be a turning point in their career. Miina Rajakangas started at Elo as a summer employee in 2016 in pension services, where her duties included processing pension applications and customer service. Situations and opportunities have led to new ones and now, eight years later, Miina works at Elo as a lead business developer. 

What have you studied and can you tell us about your career path to your current position?  

I started working at Elo as a summer employee in the summer of 2016 before I had finished my studies at LUT University. After the summer, I stayed on as an hourly worker alongside my studies. After graduating in 2018 with a Master's degree in Economics and Business Administration, Elo offered me a new contract, giving me the opportunity to further explore the pension sector.  

For my Master's degree, I majored in procurement management. Although I haven’t actually worked in procurement since graduation, I feel that the degree gave me with a good foundation for working life. My studies in procurement management involved, among other things, service procurement and service design, which have supported my work tasks in customer service development. During my studies, I also got to study, on a general level, management, responsibility and strategic thinking, for example. In addition, I learnt to manage broad subject areas and work in a team. These skills laid a good foundation for my career and help me understand the business and its development. 
Already in my first summer at Elo, I got acquainted with international pension matters and, during my first years with the company, I advanced in expert work. Gradually, my job description expanded from application processing and customer service to system testing and chatbot training, for example. 

In 2021, I became a customer service manager and a supervisor. In that role, I was able to increase my own knowledge and skills and observe different ways of working. When working as a customer service manager, supervision tasks took up a large part of my working time. I was also involved in various development tasks. 

In 2023, I switched back from supervisory tasks to expert work when I became a lead business developer. Supervisory and expert work both have their merits, and I’m glad that at Elo I’ve been able to try my hand at both without the different roles having ruled out any opportunities. 

What are your main tasks/responsibilities?  

I still work a lot on projects related to customer service development. For example, I’m involved in the development of online services and chatbot for Elo’s individual customers. In addition, my task is to familiarise myself with various technical solutions and find out how we could utilise them in our business. In fact, I cooperate a lot with both ICT and our insurance services. I’m also involved in developing our unit’s innovation culture, which aims to create an environment where people dare to ideate. That way we’ll have new ideas to put into practice. 

The tasks on my desk are very diverse, and I collaborate a lot with other people. In my role, it’s essential to manage my own workload effectively and to work autonomously. 

What is the best thing about your current job?   

I like how diverse my work is. In my work, I get to learn new things, which I find motivating. I’m pleased that my supervisor allows me to generate ideas and express myself through my work.