(FORTUNE Magazine) – How do you sell an expensive product to reluctant buyers? Sounds like a course from business school, but the B-schools themselves are looking for the answer. They're finding it tough to land jobs for their new MBAs in these times of shrinking corporate payrolls. One novel marketing approach comes from Vanderbilt's Owen School of Business in Nashville, Tennessee. Instead of the resume book that B-schools usually publish, Owen's placement director, Peter Veruki, has put together a glossy catalogue to be mailed to several thousand companies. It includes 33 pages of photographs of the 180 members of the class of 1991, lists some of their special qualifications, and gives their home telephone numbers. Says Veruki: ''There's no way a small company in Oregon is going to come out to Nashville to interview. But they can look in the book, see someone who looks interesting, and get more information over the phone.'' Other schools balk at such a meat-rack approach. For one thing, they say, it promotes sexual or racial discrimination. Says Rochelle Kaplan, general counsel for the nonprofit College Placement Council: ''It's not quite kosher. How candidates look in a picture should not even be a consideration.'' Deborah Clemens, 23, the Owen MBA pictured above who got a job nibble from a bank that received the catalogue, agrees: ''Employers like you to be attractive. It shouldn't be a selection criterion, but it is.'' J.R.