Does your Alma Mater help you find job opportunities?

I had an interesting experience today. At work, we're recruiting for a specialized position, the kind that you have to have a certain kind of advanced degree for. There are a good number of graduate programs whose alumni would be ideal for this job, and given the current unemployment situation in the US, I thought that approaching these schools' alumni networks would be worth a try.

What made my quest particularly interesting was the mixed results that I had. Before I say more, I should say that we are gladly paying both generic job sites and specialist industry associations to list the position. But I wanted to reach out through alumni networks as well, because graduate programs' alumni networks tend to be a good resource for job-seekers, even years after graduating.

Some of the best programs (Carnegie Mellon and University of Texas stand out in my mind) make it dead simple for employers to post job listings. Best of all, their programs have a very straightforward navigation to an "Employers" button that led to an e-mail link or a web form to submit a job description. You'd think that this would be pretty obvious - after all, these are professional programs whose graduates expect to go on to successful careers. But surprisingly less than half of the sites I viewed made it clear how an employer could list positions for interns, new graduates or alumni. One of the worst offenders in this regard had an absolutely beautiful site - as long as you are a prospective student who wants to learn about the program's courses and faculty (which are top-tier). But if you're an employer wondering how to reach those students, good luck.

Most sites had an e-mail address for an actual human being - an important feature. But a surprising number of programs had links for employers that led to complicated registrations. What's more, in many of these programs, once past the complicated registration process, the site required payment to post the job. As I said, we have gladly paid job sites and specialist associations to carry our job posting. But it's just impractical to fork over several hundred dollars to every academic program in the country.

My question is - if you're a graduate that spent thousands of dollars and years of your life to earn your advanced degree, and you give what you can as a loyal alumnus of your university's graduate program, are you being shortchanged if they drive prospective employers away? In times like these, shouldn't your alma mater be one of your best sources of opportunity, rather than a gatekeeper that charges prospective employers for the privilege of communicating to its students and alumni?