By ALINA DIZIK

Graduating students who left secure, full-time jobs to enter business school in 2007 are finding the recruiting season even worse than they anticipated. Far fewer companies are coming to campus and those who do show up have few, if any, jobs to offer.

Career officials say this is the worst recruiting season they remember. In a survey by the MBA Career Services Council, an association of business-school career offices, 56% of business schools reported a significant decrease in recruiting this winter. Job-posting activity, usually robust in M.B.A. programs, is sluggish, with 70% of schools saying activity was down more than 10%.

Internship recruiting has also slowed significantly, according to survey findings to be released Monday. That has a big impact on students' job prospects because typically about half of students receive full-time offers after working as interns.

The survey data, collected in January, show a decline far worse than what schools anticipated as late as October. Last year, for example, 81% of the graduating M.B.A. class at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business had accepted full-time offers by January. But, just 61% had them this year, according to Ken Keeley, executive director of the school's career center.

"We knew the financial-services marketplace was devastated in August but didn't understand the impact on the rest of the economy," says Mr. Keeley.

Liana Metzger, a 27-year-old M.B.A. student from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, went through the school's formal recruiting process last fall to find a job as a consultant.

But, instead of fielding offers, she is in a growing group of classmates who walked away empty-handed. "It was an absolute blood bath," says Ms. Metzger, who was told by a top firm that in a typical year, she would have received a job offer.

Ms. Metzger says she is continuing her search less formally and is considering starting a business with classmates. "The system they have in place now seems to be one that works very well when the economy is good, but now that there are no employers coming -- no one knows what to do," she says.

Justin Krauss, 31, who enrolled at Carnegie Mellon after working in investment banking says he's realized that a career switch may be impossible. "People have been lulled into thinking you deserve to get a job in September or October and spend the rest of the year playing racquetball," he says. These days, though, "the economy chooses where you go for you."

For international students studying in the U.S., this year's search is even more devastating. Work-visa restrictions coupled with dwindling recruiting opportunities have left people like Boston University student Gurjinder Gill, 32, without many choices.

Mr. Gill, a former engineer from India, says he hasn't been called for a personal interview and is now seeking "anything available in the market which complements my strengths." Mr. Gill and his wife, who is in dental school, sold their house in India so they could pay their graduate-school tuition.

Internships are another sore spot: Some 62% of schools expect internship opportunities to decrease for first-year students seeking positions outside of banking. For financial jobs, 50% expect a decrease. Stacey Rudnick, director of M.B.A. career services at the University of Texas-Austin McCombs School of Business, is telling this year's class to research and focus on pitching small-scale consulting projects to companies in the hopes that these could turn into a less-structured summer internship.

"If there's a silver lining to this, it's that most companies are short-staffed right now," says Ms. Rudnick.

Those seeking full-time offers are also urged to spend more time conducting their own search. Kip Harrell, the head of career development at Thunderbird School of Global Management, says students need to expand their network and look beyond immediate connections while taking advantage of increased career counseling opportunities at the school. "It means calling people you may not know and buying them coffee to pick their brains about an industry," says Mr. Harrell, who is also the president of the MBA Career Services Council.

Despite the gloom, some lower-paying sectors such as health care, alternative energy and nonprofits or government have seen an increase in recruiting activity.

At Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business, M.B.A. student Ted Wilson helped start the Tuck Energy Collaborative last fall and says school membership has doubled. "There's been a massive shift," says Mr. Wilson who adds that the career center is focusing on finding more energy recruiting opportunities.

Write to Alina Dizik at alina.dizik@wsj.com