Meet Else Suutarinen, Master in Management and Innovation graduate at TUM School of Management, who is now driving HR-technologies at the TUM start-up Retorio.
Else Suutarinen is originally from Finland, but has experienced many different countries and cultures around the world. After a successful career in HR consulting, recruitment and internal training, she decided to broaden her horizons once again by studying at TUM School of Management. Today, with her degree in the pocket, she looks back with us on her studies and reveals how she has since benefited daily from the strong practical focus of her master’s degree.
Else Suutarinen, Master in Management and Innovation graduate at TUM School of Management, is now driving HR-technologies at the TUM start-up Retorio.
Else Suutarinen has been familiar with professional fields related to innovative technologies since the beginning of her career as a recruiter. Over time, her interest in working in this field herself grew: “I became super curious to learn more about innovation, about technologies and how to be a part of it,” says Else about her decision to start the master’s program in Management and Innovation at TUM School of Management.
Looking back, Else’s expectations of the program were fully met: “You work with companies and work on your projects, so that you can actually apply the information you learned in the lectures, instead of just studying for exams and putting that information down on paper,” explains Else. She also benefited greatly from the various company visits during the MiMI program: “There are so many of these hidden champions in Germany. We all know the big names and the big players, but it was very profitable for all of us to see what else might be out there,” she continues.
Through her studies at the TUM School of Management, Else has gained insights into different corporate cultures – but where should her own career lead? For the tech-savvy student, it was important to combine her previous work experience in HR with the content from her master’s program: “Our professor actually mentioned this TUM start-up called Retorio. It’s an HR tech company that uses AI for behavioral personality analysis and soft skills training. I started working there at the end of 2019 and I’m still with the company. I have found my own niche in HR tech where I can combine my old and new experiences,” she explains.
Else still sees a lot of development potential in Germany in terms of expanding digital platforms and remote work – which she hopes to fill with her work. The Corona crisis has forced many companies to modernize digitally, including in the area of HR. Still, Else knows there is a lot of uncertainty and skepticism in society about new technologies like artificial intelligence. She aims to alleviate these concerns. After all, carefully trained AI is more objective – and thus less biased, since we humans always have our conscious and unconscious biases, says the product manager. “To be clear, it’s not about saying ‘this is who you are,’ it’s about how you would be perceived if you were talking to thousands of people. It gives a recruiter an additional opinion, for example, whether you’re a good fit for the team and whether you can fill a certain position well,” she says.
By joining Retorio, Else Suutarinen decided not to take the presumably easier route in an established company, but to help build something. Accordingly, she sees her career as part of the Munich-based start-up as just the beginning of a long journey. “I would say my first goal is to be really good at what I’m doing right now,” says Else at the end of our conversation, looking to the future. Chances are, she’s backed the right horse. Because in fact, there’s little doubt that her company’s line of business will have a secure place in the future of human resources.
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