Big Bad Clients

Hi Danny, 

I am trying to break into a large fortune 500 company. Whenever I contact them, I receive the “we are all set, but if we have a need we will call you.” You know the phone has not rung. Today I tried the MPC approach based on a current opening. Here is the response I received. “We appreciate you reaching out however, we do not accept blind submittals from third parties. If we need additional support filling the role, we will be sure to reach out to you at that time.” Just in case the phone doesn't ring tomorrow what would you recommend? 

Danny's response:

Rest assured the phone won’t be ringing today. Or any day soon…

What do I recommend? Take a breather from chasing this Trojan Horse and reflect with me. According to the SBA, small business is “the heart of the American Economy.” (small defined as employees from 0-500 and sales from 2.5 to 20 million ish) They account for 64% of all the new jobs. They create 46% of the non-farming GDP. There are 28 million small businesses, employing 60 million people. In the time you have taken calling your behemoth, along with all the other firms who can read postings, you could have called 25 of the 28 million. And you know what you would find if you keep calling?
They don’t use social media or internal recruiters for much of their hiring.
You can talk to a live decision maker and not submit into a VMS Marianas Trench.
They won’t tell you they already have your candidate in their database.
They won’t have a vendor agreement that appears to be written by Tolstoy.
They hire when they are ready, stockpile no “bench” and react with urgency.
They will be loyal to you if you deliver excellent people. They will refer you to their other small biz entrepreneurial friends.

Your behemoth, on the other hand, does not perceive themselves as needing you. They have options, and they are not changing their procedures or protocols for you. And the line managers at big companies are lateral to, not nested above, the HR directors. No leverage.

This isn’t about changing your approach or verbiage or MPC calls versus Emails or Texts. It’s about the target. They’re big and well known and candidates want to work there and there are tons of jobs there and it would all be so great if they just weren’t’ all of those things. I recommend you do what we do with Behemoths. We take their disgruntled or underappreciated people, and they are legion by definition, and we place them at small to medium sized businesses.