100 Job Strategies
100 Job Strategies · 4 of 100
The Vendor Side Door
You cannot get hired by them. So get hired by the people they already pay.
In short
Companies that are hard to join directly are usually surrounded by agencies, suppliers and contractors who are far easier to join. Working for one of those puts you inside the target company's meetings, on their systems and in front of their staff — as a colleague rather than an applicant. Internal referrals and direct offers follow from proximity that no application can buy.
The situation
There is a company you want to work for. Their careers page gets thousands of applications. You have applied twice and heard nothing both times.
Meanwhile, three desks away from the manager you are trying to reach, someone from an external agency is sitting in their weekly planning meeting. They have a laptop, a badge, and an opinion the team listens to.
That person did not out-compete you for a job at the target company. They got a job somewhere much easier to get into — and the work brought them inside.
Why this works
Large and desirable companies do not do everything themselves. They hire agencies for design, media, recruitment and engineering. They buy from suppliers. They bring in contractors and consultancies for projects their own headcount cannot absorb. Every one of those partners employs people who spend their working week embedded with the client.
Those partner firms are dramatically easier to join. They hire more often, they screen less severely, they care more about billable capability than pedigree, and hardly anyone targets them deliberately because the brand on the door is not the brand people want.
Once inside, three things happen that an outside candidate can never manufacture. You become a known quantity — people watch you work for months rather than judging a 45-minute interview. You learn the company's actual systems, vocabulary and politics, which makes you a low-risk hire. And you build relationships with the exact managers who would be doing the hiring, so when a role opens you hear about it before it is posted and someone inside is willing to vouch.
Companies also hire from their vendors constantly, because it is the cheapest possible hire: zero onboarding risk, proven performance, no agency fee beyond whatever conversion clause exists in the contract.
How to run it
- 1
Map who the target company pays
Look for case studies on agency websites naming the client, press releases about partnerships, procurement and tender records, and the logos on supplier landing pages. The target company's own blog often thanks partners by name.
- 2
Check staff profiles for the giveaway
People write "Agency X, working on the Northwind account" on their profiles constantly. Searching the target company's name plus words like agency, partner, consultant or contractor surfaces the whole ecosystem.
- 3
Apply to the partner, not the client
Apply normally. These firms hire frequently and their bar is about whether you can do billable work, not whether you look like a prestige hire.
- 4
Ask to be staffed on that account
This is the step that matters and almost nobody takes it. In interviews and once inside, say plainly that you find that client's sector interesting and would like to work on the account. Staffing managers are usually delighted to hear a preference.
- 5
Behave like a colleague, not a supplier
Learn names. Show up prepared. Be the person from the agency who makes the client's life easier. Your reputation inside that building is the entire asset you are building here.
- 6
Wait for the conversation to come to you
After six to twelve good months, conversion conversations tend to start themselves. If they do not, you now know the managers well enough to raise it directly — which is a very different conversation from applying cold.
What to say
When it does not work
- Contract clauses. Many client-vendor agreements include non-solicitation terms, sometimes with a buyout fee, that restrict direct hiring for a period. It rarely blocks a move permanently but it can delay one, so find out early rather than late.
- Burning the agency that hired you. Openly treating a job as a stepping stone gets you staffed away from the client fast. Do the work you were hired for, properly — the proximity only pays off if your reputation is good.
- Picking a partner with no real embedding. Some vendors deliver remotely and never meet the client's team. Prioritise firms whose people sit in the client's meetings, because presence is the whole mechanism.
- Assuming proximity alone converts. Being nearby does nothing on its own. The people who get hired are the ones the client's team has watched solve problems and would actively choose to work with.
- A long stall. This is a multi-month strategy, not a quick route. If you need a job in three weeks, run something faster alongside it.
The hardest companies to join are ringed by companies that are easy to join — and those companies send their people through the front door every morning.
Questions
How do I find out which agencies and vendors work with a company?
Agency websites publish client case studies naming the brands they work with, and those are searchable. Beyond that: press releases announcing partnerships, public procurement and tender records for larger or government-adjacent organisations, conference sponsor lists, and staff profiles where people routinely name the account they work on. Searching the target company's name alongside words like agency, partner, consultancy or supplier surfaces most of the ecosystem within an hour.
Will a contract clause stop the client from hiring me?
Non-solicitation clauses are common in client-vendor agreements and usually either prohibit direct hiring for a defined period or require a conversion fee. They are a friction rather than a wall — clients hire from vendors regularly and simply pay or wait. What matters is knowing the terms early so your expectations are accurate, and not being surprised by a six-month cooling-off period after you have already mentally accepted an offer.
Is this dishonest towards the agency that hires me?
It would be if you took the job intending to leave immediately and coasted on the work. It is not if you do the job you were hired for well, for a reasonable period, and a client later makes you an offer. That is an ordinary and expected part of how the services industry works — agencies know it happens, price it into contracts, and often keep good relationships with people who move client-side, because those people become the ones buying their services.
Does this work outside agencies and consulting?
Yes, and the same logic applies well beyond white-collar work. Facilities, catering, logistics, security, maintenance and staffing suppliers all place people inside client sites daily, and those companies hire far more readily than the brands they serve. Anywhere a desirable employer outsources a function, there is a supplier whose staff walk through that employer's doors every morning.