(FORTUNE Magazine) – Faced with a stagnant job scene, unemployed managers, career changers, and freshly minted college graduates are finding new ways to hunt for work. Big ) corporations still look good to many, who flood human resources departments with resumes. IBM gets about one million a year. (See chart for other examples.) But few experts expect any mass hiring by big outfits even though the economy seems to be recovering, and small companies are not picking up the slack as they used to -- indeed, in the first three months of 1992 they let go more people than they hired. Clearly, job hunters need an edge. Here are techniques that some -- like the newly graduated MBAs shown above -- are using to beat the odds.

Here's a new way to stand out in a crowded field. First-year marketing students at Washington University's John M. Olin School of Business in St. Louis are trying to hit home runs with prospective employers by sending them trading cards. These baseball derivatives feature the students in sporting gear on the front side and give their career highlights on the back. The photo shows Callaway Ludington, 27, who is a former journalist. The 33 students each spent $25 on 100 cards and mailed them to prospective employers, including Pet, Ralston Purina, and Sara Lee. Those in search of summer jobs followed up quickly with detailed resumes, and about 20 have found work. Among them: James Pruett, 27, one of three who'll be working at Pet, a food company in St. Louis. ''It was a great way of breaking through the clutter that's out there in terms of other people looking for jobs,'' he says. Syl Stevenson, general manager of health foods at Pet, agrees: ''If I'd gotten a stack of 33 resumes, I would have just scanned them. I read each of the trading cards.'' -- R.T.