About Sean Hassani
Sean Hassani is a Senior Consultant, Cyber Security at Rutherford, a London-based recruitment firm which specialises in compliance, cyber security, legal, financial crime and risk & operations searches within the financial services industry. After graduating in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Sean started his career in the recruitment space, specialising from the get-go in the Information and Cyber Security sector.
After working for a tech-focused recruitment firm, Sean spent a few years working for a specialist search agency within their Information and Cyber Security function, where he quickly moved up the corporate ladder. He now joins Rutherford to further build out the firm's Cyber Security desk and efforts.
What does success look like to you?
Success comes in different shapes and forms; success will look different to different people, both professionally and personally. In recruitment, success to me includes three fundamentals; a structured plan, building trust and having a passion for the sector you work in. You need to embed these 3 fundamentals into your everyday structure to achieve success. In doing this I believe I will be in a position to attain my long term goals.
What is the best part of working with firms who want to strengthen their cyber security function?
When a firm understands its risk posture and its cyber security strategy matches this, there are several factors that excite me when being able to build out these functions. From the initial conversation through to the full recruitment life cycle, I have a chance to immerse myself in both the candidate and client's business. You get a sense of real achievement when a client has a problem, and you can solve some of that pain in their organisation. When placing candidates there is also a sense that you have improved an area of their career, which in turn impacts the rest of their lives either financially, from a work-life balance perspective, or whatever their motivations were to seek new employment.
I also pride myself on repeat business. When you work with a client and they come back to you again, it shows you are doing a good job to support their sourcing needs.
How did you improve your knowledge of the sector you work in?
When I started back in 2018, it was a bit overwhelming learning about information and cyber security. It wasn’t something I had ever studied or worked across before but for me, it was all about not being afraid to make mistakes. I’m never going to be able to do the role of a cyber security professional, but what I can do is understand how they do their job on a day-to-day basis. I started by signing up to websites, getting alerts set up on news feeds. I also listened to podcasts - for which I have great recommendations if anyone is interested!
But the most important element for me was engaging with clients and candidates daily, and building up my knowledge from there. People like to talk about themselves, and how they are successful. I found candidates always willing to share their knowledge and explain in layman’s terms how they go about their day jobs. This helped me immensely to learn the intricacies of the cyber security market.
What is the most unexpected thing you ever did?
Becoming a recruiter: it was never planned.
