Success Story: Matthew Farrell ’18 secures cyber consultant role at Deloitte
Success Stories | May 31, 2018 | admin
When Matthew Farrell, BS ’18, was recruited to play Division I water polo at Fordham, he was excited to compete. However, after a freshman-year injury took him out of the water, he realized “I needed to reinvent myself while maintaining my competitive spirit.”
As an applied accounting and finance major at the Gabelli School, Farrell transferred his competitive nature to case competitions.
The eventual result of that reinvention? Farrell will start in September as a cyber consultant at Deloitte, working with multiple clients to minimize risk on cyber applications.
The path that led him to this opportunity, says Farrell, “all goes back to the case competition.” During his sophomore year, he won first place at the national level in the Deloitte R.I.S.E. case competition, and was then offered an internship at the company.
Despite having put in place a stepping stone toward a full-time role, Farrell didn’t stop there. He went on to place first in a PwC competition, and then most recently in the EY Imagination Challenge, where he says his team was tasked with describing “how bitcoin, blockchain, and various technologies were going to impact the world in the near future.”
Farrell’s team created a cartoon that “made it easier to consume the knowledge and understand how it would look on a day-to-day basis,” he explains.
The ability to distill information into easily understandable details, as well as “the ability to be able to talk with anyone, connect with anyone, and find out their motivations,” Farrell says, will be useful at his new job, as his clients will come from a variety of different backgrounds.
These communication skills, evidenced through competition wins, helped Farrell stand out as a candidate. Those first-place rankings also “showed the company I could build a plan and execute a plan,” he says.
Another conversation starter: Farrell’s job at Tesla, where he has been working as a product and customer experience specialist for three years. He plans to return there after a trip around Europe this summer, before his Deloitte position begins.
Farrell recognizes that he may not have ended up with this new role had his original water polo plans worked out. That’s why he advocates, “Don’t be afraid to take advantage of an opportunity when it shows itself at the last moment.”
