In a recent post on his blog, for example, Robert F. Bruner, dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, reported that he had written all of the school’s 9,000 alumni, asking for their assistance in finding positions for Darden MBA students. Within an hour, he said, they had 8 replies and in a day had 15 new job postings. A Darden program dubbed “Generating Offers and Leads” (GOAL) helps coalesce the sharing of job leads.

The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California-Irvine has many strategies to help students find work. According to Anne Warde in the school’s public relations department, they’re inviting more industry guest speakers to give students perspective on careers they might not have been considering. Every second-year student in the full-time class who is still seeking employment meets individually with an advising team that critiques the student’s job-search strategies. “Often we overlook the strength of what is in our own backyard,” Warde says, and so the school encourages fully employed MBA students to share job leads through a program called Peer to Peer Networking. Through Linked In, the Merage School connects newly admitted students who have recently lost their job—or are worried they will—with current students who work at companies that the new admits might be interested in.

In addition to sponsoring student job-search groups, the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego helps its MBAs connect directly with members of its Dean’s Advisory Council, a who’s who of business leaders in the school’s region, and other senior executives.

Jeffrey D. Rice, executive director of career management at the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, says their approach to the employment challenge uses a “partnership model” that engages faculty, staff, alumni, the larger university community, recruiters, advisory groups, and employer members of OSU’s many research centers in the generation of job leads. Recognizing that there are pockets of opportunity even in the downturn, Rice has found success in focusing on select small businesses, entrepreneurs, and industries that will benefit from the federal economic stimulus plan, including health care, education, government, and energy.

Andy Chan, director of the Career Management Center at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, makes a point of meeting job-seeking students on their turf—in the cafeteria, in a B-school courtyard—to hear their concerns and answer their questions. He also shares career strategies through a blog and offers webinar training on how to use social networking sites in a job search. Chan encourages students to build their resume through immersion internships with global companies and entrepreneurship internships with start-up businesses. Aggressive in making sure companies know about Stanford students, he also reaches out to help students connect with alumni who might be able to help them find work.

At the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, two faculty members coordinate a support group that meets regularly to help out-of-work MBA students land a job and help one another.

At the same time, it’s important to note that while the employment picture keeps much of the focus on the near term, business schools haven’t lost sight of the big picture. Marianne Schouten, the media and public relations manager at the Rotterdam School of Management, summed it up well. Because RSM programs are “focused on context rather than content and stakeholder value rather than shareholder value”—in combination with personal leadership development—she says the school is confident that its graduates “have the correct education to be future business leaders.”