Binghamton University’s School of Management has unlocked a vault for its student job hunters.

Vault.com — a Web site with job and internship postings, industry overviews and message boards — offers a free basic membership or a paid advanced membership. Although SOM students have access to the advanced perks, they got it for free.

Using the site is “part of the overall strategy of the school to be among the elite business schools in the country,” SOM Dean Upinder Dhillon said.

All great business schools have highly developed “placement operations,” according to Dhillon, and where students get jobs is a high priority for SOM. Consequently, the school hired a placement director from the University’s Career Development Center. But getting 1,600 students — 1,400 undergraduates and 200 graduates — into the marketplace was no easy task for one person.

The school, however, turned to the Internet since “students understand the Web – they interact with it all the time,” Dhillon said.

SOM students can log on to their “Online Career library,” an extension of Vault.com, through the SOM homepage. Here they can access job seeking tools like “Vault guides,” which include industry guides, general career advice guides and employer profiles.

The Vault guides are practically “required reading” for SOM students, Dhillon said, and have been a great help so far.

“I began to talk to recruiters and one of the issues that came up was that our students are extremely bright and hardworking but lacked an awareness of the job market,” Dhillon said. “Until you really understand the details of the job you can’t really be successful in the interview process.”

The guides are available for students if their school purchases a subscription, which can range from $15,000 to upwards of $60,000 annually depending on the size of the library population, according to Sara J. Madsen, client services coordinator of the site.

To pay for the expense, SOM sought outside funding from the Binghamton branch of Northwestern Mutual Financial Network. Thanks to the branch’s field director Stephen Feehan and his business partner Stephen Guinan, Northwestern Mutual has offered to sponsor the subscription. Feehan is an alumnus of SOM’s graduate program and a former student of Dhillon’s.

The overall effect has yet to be determined of SOM’s Online Career Library since its installment in July 2007. But Dhillon said he’s heard from recruiters that students have been much better prepared for interviews.

Vault.com was founded in 1996 by three men who spent the better part of their 20s accumulating the credentials that would lead them to high-paying positions on Wall Street or in law firms. While basic job seeking features are available for free, individual users can purchase a gold membership, which can range from $6.95 per month for a three year subscription to $15.00 per month for a three month subscription. Gold members can access employee feedback about their industries and can refer to a bank of sample admission essays for graduate programs.

But Vault.com isn’t the only resource for SOM students.

SOM also hopes to implement “Interview Stream.” The online resource features “Webcam recorded video interviewing … [to] create a standard in video interviews for practice, presenting and screening,” according to interviewstream.com. The school is searching for funding as it did to gain access to the Vault Career Online Library service.

And according to Dhillon, CDC and “especially e-Recruiting” are other resources for job seekers. e-Recruiting allows students to learn when recruiters are coming to Binghamton, acquire skills that specific employers desire, get help with resume preparation and have access to the University’s alumni-student networking service.

While so much emphasis on career placement could be intimidating, other schools within BU, such as Harpur School of Arts and Sciences, are “not as focused on placement as we have to be,” Dhillon said.

Instead of jumping directly into the job market, “many of their students go on to graduate school and medical school,” he said.