"Can you connect me with someone at Microsoft?"

I'm getting more and more mail from folks that want to be connected with someone at Microsoft to talk about sponsorship deals, business opportunities, employee rewards (at least 5 phone calls on this one)...the list goes on. They are trying to sell something. I know in the past I've said I answer every piece of mail I get and I'm sticking with that (not including spam of course), however, unfortunately, the answer to these requests is going to be "no". I hate saying no to people but I'm in Staffing. If someone is asking about something Staffing related ("can you forward our info to the person that handles your recruitment advertising?"), then, sure, I'll do that. I know who that person is.

But we are a 65,000 person company. I've *maybe* met 500 of those people. Also, I am not really the person to evaluate whether these presented opportunities are worth the intended recipient's time so they (the recipients) could be considering my mail spam (which is why I don't share other peoples' contact info). I'm not comfortable acting as the middle-person when I don't know the requester and it;s not staffing related.

I get that we are a big company and people want to do deals with us. I'm just not the appropriate conduit for those deals. My recommendation to people tempted to contact me and ask me to get them in touch with someone at Microsoft is that they go online and do some research on the people that might be responsible for fielding their request and call the receptionist and ask for that person. Or try to leverage their personal networks (people they know and trust) to get an introduction. If they call me, I can't call them back. If they e-mail me, they'll receive a polite decline (sorry,there's only so much time in a day...gotta focus on my actual job).

If it's staffing related, definitely feel free to contact me (e-mail is preferred). But unfortunately, I can't field other "deal" requests as a representative of Microsoft at large. That's a different job than the one I have. Anything job or resume or staffing or career related, get in touch!

Just posting this in the hopes that the number of deal introduction requests goes down.