What do the career path and the day-in-the-life look like for an Intelligence Consultant at Recorded Future?
We connected with Cassidy O'Hearn to find out!
Interested in learning more about Recorded Future and their job openings? Make sure to check out their company page on VentureFizz!
Where did you go to college? What did you study and what were some of your initial jobs out of school?
I went to Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ. I graduated in the Spring of 2018 with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Economics. My initial job out of college was with Booz Allen Hamilton as a candidate in their Cyber Immersion pilot program. Within the program we spent about 10 months transitioning between their Security Operations Center (SOC) teams. This gave me exposure and experience with red teaming, digital forensics, customer response, incident handling, vulnerability management, threat hunting, and cyber threat intelligence. After this experience I decided to stay with the cyber threat intelligence team for another two years before accepting a position at Recorded Future.
What has attributed to your success thus far and has helped propel you to the position you have now?
The three main things that have helped in my success would be that I am very organized, I am a self-starter, and I have the experience of being on a single analyst cyber threat intelligence team. When juggling a client load of anywhere between 11-18 clients, it is extremely important to stay organized in the materials you have. This includes tracking who the client is, progress in the various projects you are working on with them along with their licensing and renewal dates for the various products they own with Recorded Future. Additionally, it is important to be able to manage your own time. You are in charge of your client load. Being able to start new projects and see them through to the end with a client is really important because they are dealing with a million other things and a ton of other vendors. Clients are busy and often don’t realize all of the additional projects we offer to them, so it is truly on the consultant to communicate and drive those additional projects that will make a client’s experience with Recorded Future above and beyond. Lastly, having experience as an analyst has helped me empathize with my clients and be more prescriptive because I understand where they are coming from and I have sat in their seat.
Can you share the high-level responsibilities of your current position as a Intelligence Consultant at Recorded Future?
As a consultant I am responsible for being the liaison between Recorded Future and our clients. My main responsibilities include scheduling meetings with clients to deliver product updates, working with clients to ensure the platform is set up to maximize efficiency, and running various projects with clients to help mature their cyber security operations.
What have you found unique about Recorded Future?
I love how amazing everyone's work ethic is at Recorded Future. It is very refreshing to work with people who genuinely care about what they do and want to put out the best work.
Any tips for someone considering a career in your field?
Here are a few nuggets of knowledge that have helped me in my career:
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Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. This is where growth happens - and promotions and raises. Once you feel comfortable in your role, start taking on more.
- Look for information before you ask a question. There is no issue in asking a question if you can’t find the information anywhere but it is going to look better on you if you take the 5-10 minutes to check and see if there are already resources that answer the question before you ask.
Day in the Life
Coffee, tea, or nothing?
I am a big fan of four sigmatic coffee. So I will do an iced half-caff or decaf coffee with oat milk and vanilla most mornings.
What are three things that motivate you in your role?
- Number one is definitely making my clients happy. Getting positive feedback from a client is always going to motivate me to continue delivering excellent work.
- I have such a great team of consultants that I work with: we serve as each other’s guinea pigs and help each other with various client use cases and we all benefit from it.
- Lastly, being able to provide my dog with the life he deserves (kidding, kinda).
Every day is different, but can you outline what a typical day looks like for you?
I would say my days fall into two categories. It is either a meeting day or a working day. This is what a typical day would look like if i married the two days:
- 8am - 8:30am: Take my dog, Turkey, on his morning walk
- 8:30am - 9am: Make breakfast and coffee and check my schedule for the day
- 9am - 11am: Go through inbox and answer any client questions and send out follow up emails to clients from meetings I had the day prior
- 12pm -12:30pm: Make a smoothie and take out Turkey
- 12:30pm - 4pm: Client calls
- 4pm - 5pm: Follow up with any internal members on todos from the client meetings that need to get started that day
Any productivity hacks?
I try to not plan any meetings on Mondays or Fridays. I use Mondays to set up a todo list and timeblock out my tasks for the week. I use Fridays to wrap up any client work. As a consultant I have learned it is always good to leave your calendar open on Fridays in case you have any urgent requests coming in from clients.
What are the 3 apps that you can’t live without?
- Google Calendar - I have been using this since college and I am ADDICTED. I use it for work and my personal life and have shared calendars with family and friends (although they don’t often reference my scheduled events in the calendar)
- Apple “Do Not Disturb” - I have set up a “work” do not disturb profile so that only slack, google calendar and emails come through. This helps immensely with focusing on busy days.
- Apple Reminders - I will add my running to do list here and then you can also add dates and times of when things are due so that you can switch from a master todo list to your scheduled todo list
What professional accomplishment are you proudest of?
I am proud of switching jobs. I don’t think many people talk about this or prepare you but switching jobs can be scary and difficult. When I did this most of my mentors at the time hadn’t switched jobs for the past 5+ years so they didn’t have much insight. It felt very scary to leave a job that was known and I was comfortable in even though the salary and daily responsibilities were no longer satisfying me. Looking back, I am so happy I made the transition - I couldn’t find a job better suited for me!
Who do you admire or call upon for professional advice?
I am lucky enough to have a network of strong women to turn to when I need advice. This includes managers and coworkers at Recorded Future along with friends and family members working in different industries. This is a male dominated field so it can be great to have a female perspective on some of the nuances that women in cyber have to navigate.
