We caught up with Emiliano Carrillo in his home country of Mexico to find out how is doing after graduation. After completing the International Master in Management at EADA, he moved to Germany to work in M&A and Business Restructuring activities within the automotive industry. After more than a year in Motherson Group, he decided to pursue his passion within the e-commerce industry and apply at Amazon, where he is correctly working as a financial analyst.
Can you tell us a bit about your current responsibilities in Amazon?
I am currently part of a rotational talent development programme that goes through the cash flow, operations, accounting, and controlling departments of Amazon’s finance organisation. In my current role as part of the Consumables Finance Team in Germany, I take care of the Beer/Wine/Spirits, Pantry, and Global Store programmes of Amazon.de, working together with the business team to define our future strategic growth and margin improvement initiatives, while supporting them with the deep dives and financial data required for everyday decision making to drive the business.
How would you define the importance of incorporating Corporate Social Responsibility into financial strategies?
CSR is one of the topics that I enjoyed the most during my studies at EADA. I carry my experience with CSR into my current position, where making decisions purely based on a financial grounds could potentially clash against CSR principles. Being able to understand when to apply and follow CSR is critical in order to drive business in a sustainable way, and make an impact on our surroundings at the same time.
How did your EADA experience prepare you to work in a revolutionary company like Amazon?
The most valuable skills I learned at EADA were the “soft skills” that we worked on at the Residential Training Campus. The diverse classrooms also exposed me to an entirely new world of multiculturalism. Learning how to interact and make things happen in an efficient, streamlined way, while dealing with different perspectives on business and results delivery was a key component of my preparation to enter the real corporate world. Today, you rarely end up working with people from similar backgrounds in the business world.
How do you keep up in a field like e-commerce that is constantly changing?
Embrace change, feel comfortable with learning new things on a daily basis, and never be surprised about the fact that whatever works today will most likely be obsolete tomorrow. Innovation is the key to thriving in business.
What are the most important skills of your current job?
The most important skill in my job is learning how to efficiently back up critical decisions with as much data as possible, while knowing how to make a final call based on a gut feeling. Answers will never come out of thin air, and we need to ensure we move the best way we can in a corporate world that is normally full of uncertainty.
Secondly, learning how to understand and interact with individuals from different backgrounds is crucial in order to make things happen. No one told me that it would be challenging going through my master’s studies where sometimes final grades or project outcomes depended on other people who might have different views than I did. However, the long term take away of my time at EADA was basically to learn how the real business world works and most importantly, learn to feel comfortable when having to manage different views or expectations successfully.
You must have the right technical skills to fulfil your role, while at the same time being able to interact harmoniously with business partners and stakeholders.
What advice would you give to future graduate that want to work in finance?
As finance professionals, we must have very solid technical fundamentals, but also a good skill set when it comes to interpersonal interaction and expectation management. We need to ensure good controllership over the activities we work with or manage, while at the same time delivering value to our shareholders, which normally implies working with many different departments within an organisation. If we can be sure that we have the right technical skills to fulfil our finance role, while at the same time being able to interact harmoniously with our business partners and stakeholders, the way forward will always be brighter.