ALLENTOWN, Pa. — College students graduating in December and May are likely to be the first in a generation to enter a job market featuring double-digit unemployment. That has colleges and universities across America scrambling this fall to revamp their career-placement offerings to help new grads land jobs.

Autumn is one of the crucial recruiting seasons, especially for students who want to find employment at Fortune 500 companies.

But the outlook for coming college graduates is decidedly grim. On top of a 22 percent decline in college-grad hiring last year, employers expect to chop those entry-level hires by an additional 7 percent this year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

“What we’re seeing is they’re really being cautious,” said NACE spokeswoman Andrea Koncz.

That dismal hiring forecast is even worse than hiring plans following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when hiring came to a virtual standstill. Average starting salaries for 2009 grads dropped 1.2 percent from the year before, to $48,633.

The basic message career counselors are sending grads: You’ll have to bust your butt to land a job in this lousy job market.

“What students did years ago isn’t enough today,” said Amy Saul, director of career development at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa. For example, today’s students are encouraged not only to participate in an internship program, but in two or three to boost their chances of being hired.

“Competition is much more fierce than it has been in the past for entry-level candidates,” she said.

And the tough economy has created a distressing paradox. Just as students most need career- placement services, many colleges are cutting budgets in their career centers as part of their own belt-tightening.

About 55 percent of college career centers nationwide are cutting their 2009-10 spending plans, according to preliminary results of a survey being conducted by NACE. Lehigh Valley college career centers haven’t made sharp cuts, but some are running leaner.

Worse yet, career-services departments are now catering to more than just current students. Recent grads who haven’t found work or were laid off are returning for help. In fact, some alumni are returning decades after graduation to use job-placement services.

For Kate Hunter, director of career services and internships at DeSales University, that meant she had to brush up on techniques to help people land mid-career jobs. “Sometimes, we’re combing through 20 years of experience on an old resume to find skills that are transferrable to the current job market,” Hunter said.

To cope with the bad job market — unemployment is 9.8 percent nationally — colleges are launching new programs, revamping old ones and tapping alumni for help.

At Lehigh University in Bethlehem, job postings dropped off a cliff in the spring. The career center started e-mailing alumni who might help. That doesn’t sound extraordinary, except that for the first time it e-mailed every single living alumnus it had an address for — an estimated 10,000, said Donna Goldfeder, director of career services. Goldfeder corresponded personally with every alum who offered a job lead. The result? Some 300 job opportunities for Lehigh grads, she said.

“We broadened our net with employer outreach too, but to be honest, that didn’t have nearly the effect of reaching out to the alums did,” Goldfeder said. By the spring semester, the career center plans to have a new online database to help students contact alumni directly.

Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., is tapping more than 600 volunteer alumni and parents to participate in mock interviews over the phone and in person. Students are using InterviewStream, an interviewing practice tool that allows students to record mock interviews using a webcam for later critique.

While new efforts and programs are more newsworthy, many colleges are re-emphasizing tried-and-true job-search techniques: writing resumes and cover letters, making contacts and developing a firm handshake.

“It’s career searching 101,” Goldfeder said.

Using such high-tech resources as LinkedIn and online job postings are important, but they don’t replace old-fashioned face-to-face networking, career counselors say. That has college students throughout the Valley practicing their elevator pitches — describing their value in the time it takes to ride an elevator.

Sometimes, part of job counseling is adjusting expectations. The reality: Some students might not get the ideal job in the ideal location right now.

While on-campus recruiting has waned, the number of job postings recently has come back toward normal levels, counselors say.