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THE last time Miriam Korn Haimes used Syracuse University’s career services, she was a kid. Twenty-one? Twenty-two, maybe?
When you’re the Class of ’76, that’s ancient history. The bachelor’s degree nestles at the bottom of a rich résumé filled with professional benchmarks, including a 23-year career at JPMorgan Chase, topped by the title of senior vice president.
“I hadn’t kept up with the university at all,” said Ms. Haimes, of Montclair, N.J. “It was so long ago.”
Until this spring, when Ms. Haimes’s department was relocated to Columbus, Ohio, and she found herself unemployed.
In the new world order of job searches, networking is everything, so she gamely dusted off her 33-year-old Syracuse affiliation. Armed with her business card and her 60-second “I’m in transition” speech, she went recently to a cocktail party for alumni. There, another Orangewoman gave her a tip: the university’s career center is not just for undergraduates but for older alumni, too.
Syracuse counselors have since critiqued Ms. Haimes’s résumé, helped tweak her job search and offered to connect her with graduates in related fields. “It’s all free,” said Ms. Haimes, in wonderment. “No one’s asked for a donation. But if I get a job, I’ll give them a large one.”
For the unemployed, the standing advice about how to find work involves doggedly attending job fairs and reaching out to everyone in your e-mail address book. But increasingly, a lesser-known avenue with the potential to be effective, thanks to the emotional bonds formed during undergraduate years, turns out to be the alma mater.
In the last year, as the recession and a 9.5 percent unemployment rate have slowed the economy, schools have been amending their pitches to older graduates. Typically, undergraduate institutions offer standard-fare golf tournaments and wine-tasting reunions — hoping to tap nostalgia and shake loose donations. Now, they are providing an expanding array of career services, including panels of alumni experts, professional affinity networks, personal coaching and job listings, support that is becoming a fixture of business and law programs. Old school ties, they suggest, can have new currency, even urgency.
