I understand the yield idea. You're 100% right, and I believe I acknowledged it somewhere in there. Since you're a former hiring manager, any advice on how to get around that impediment, beyond just submitting a resume and waiting?
Use your faculty and alumni network. In particular, scan the alumni network for people who work at a company where you want to work and contact them --- even if they're not in your role. Take advantage of the fact that most people are quite nostalgic for their college days. Almost all of them will be delighted to help you get your resume into a hiring manager's hands.
And some of your faculty should have contacts. If you ask early enough (e.g. at the start of the school year instead of middle/end), particularly from a faculty member that you've done some work for, they may be able to help you get in touch with someone. But the alumni are usually a better bet unless you have faculty who came from industry originally.
Both career services and blind job submission will have much lower acceptance rates. At least where I was, all resumes submitted through those mechanisms went into a sort of recruiting purgatory where they had to make it through non-technical screeners before I could even get a look at them.
