Job Hunter U.

College career centers aren’t just for graduating seniors any more.

Alumni are returning to campus career centers five, 10 and 20 years after graduation. Out-of-work engineers check job listings. Others research a new career after a series of dead-end jobs or ask a counselor, “What else can you do with a law degree?”

Unlike past generations, when firms and college graduates made lifetime commitments, “People change career paths several times before they retire,” said Barbara Witt, the co-director of career services at Pitzer College in Claremont.

Small liberal arts colleges like Pitzer and large institutions are welcoming back graduates like long-lost friends. Growing numbers of schools are setting up formal programs in conjunction with alumni associations, charging fees for one-on-one counseling and access to online job postings.

Patrick Scheetz, the director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University, said that when he started expanding his school’s alumni career services program, he discovered “people all over the country who are saying, ‘We are doing the same thing.’ ”

Added Scheetz, “It’s almost like the bell rang and everybody jumped on board.”

The burgeoning new field is designed to help alumni through expected twists and turns in the economy’s changing workplace.

Most futurologists predict that today’s workers will have multiple careers before retirement. Given the explosion of new jobs, it is hard for workers to keep pace.

“Think about it: 30% of the jobs that will exist in 2005 don’t exist today,” said Cindy Chernow, UCLA’s director of alumni career services. “That’s why we are needed.”

It is not an entirely altruistic endeavor: It is a way for colleges to build alumni allegiance. A grateful alum is more likely to become an active dues-paying member of the alumni association.

“And maybe when they get further along in their careers,” Scheetz said, “they may choose to support the university financially.”

UCLA became a pioneer when the recession slammed Southern California--particularly the aerospace industry--in the early 1990s. So many alumni were crowding into UCLA’s Career Center that students began to complain, pointing out that the center was funded with student fees.

At the same time, Chernow said, laid-off alumni were asking, “ ‘Hey, what are you doing for me?’ ”

So the university put Chernow, a career counselor, in charge of alumni career development. And the school started charging alumni fees.

About 200 UCLA alumni a year now hold $195 “Gold Card” memberships to the campus’ Career Center, entitling them to special workshops and conversations with career counselors.

An additional 2,800 buy $60 “Blue Card” memberships, which include no counseling but provide access to the center’s extensive library, as well as the thousands of jobs posted on the center’s World Wide Web site.

Using the Internet, they can tap into job listings from anywhere in the world. That’s a new feature being replicated by other schools across the country as a way to assist graduates who do not live within commuting distance of their alma mater.

Jobtrack, an online job posting service used by 750 colleges, universities and alumni associations, encourages employers to list jobs for experienced workers, as well as recent graduates.

Hae Yung Kim, Jobtrack’s marketing director, estimated that 30% of job postings now target alumni--workers with at least two years experience. “We are getting more and more of those jobs every day,” she said.

Employers seeking blue-chip workers can post jobs exclusively with elite universities, knowing that they can “skim the cream of the crop,” she said.

UCLA’s Chernow spends the bulk of her time arranging job workshops. They range from networking sessions for Asian Americans to “Career Options for Psychology Majors” to the popular “What Can You Do Next With Your Law Degree?”

An annual career conference and job fair in Los Angeles has been so successful--attracting recruiters from 140 companies and 1,000 alumni--that a second one has been added in the San Francisco Bay area.

USC has joined the movement to take care of the 300 to 500 alumni who use its Career Center these days, said Kristine Dillon, the associate vice president for student affairs.

For fees of $30 to $100 a year, she said, they can tap into the alumni job network, participate in on-campus interviews or take tests to match their aptitudes with different careers.

USC is amid major expansion plans for its Career Center, she said, part of a growing recognition that schools need to help older graduates, as well as recent ones, find jobs.

“People now think to come back to where they got their undergraduate degrees,” she said, “to look for those contacts and reconnect with their alumni network.”