Stanford students searching for internships across the country have new help, thanks to an online internship network that shares career resources from Stanford and seven other American universities.

The online job listing site, called iNet, offers internship information to undergraduate and graduate students at the eight universities comprising the iNet consortium. The idea for iNet emerged from discussions between Stanford Career Development Center (CDC) Director Lance Choy and his colleague at the University of Pennsylvania, Patricia Rose, over ways to broaden the geographical diversity of their internship listings.

Choy and Rose recruited their peers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgetown University, Yale University, Rice University, Northwestern University and New York University to join the internship-sharing consortium and to create a central location to provide services to their students.

The iNet Web site was launched earlier this year by NACElink, a non-profit national recruiting network that also runs the Cardinal Careers Web site.

“iNet is an additional resource to provide more opportunities around the nation,” said Jennifer Rutt, director of NACElink, a service provider to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. “Each individual career center markets to the employers that they have a relationship with and asks them to post on the iNet site.”

In the past, the Stanford CDC partnered with MonsterTrak, a for-profit job search portal, to provide a larger, more diverse pool of internships. But the CDC was unhappy with several core elements of MonsterTrak, especially since it charged employers a few hundred dollars to post internship positions, said Beverley Principal, assistant director of employment services at the CDC. Career centers at each of the participating schools also pay NACElink an annual fee for the service.

“We were looking for the type of service whereby employers could post their links for free,” Principal said. “We also wanted more control over what we offer our students and employers.”

Employers can post jobs on iNet for free, and Principal believes this is a major reason why employers are attracted to iNet.

The free job posting also provides information on smaller start-ups and non-profits, which may otherwise be unable to pay the fee to post on for-profit internship sites.

Employers have expressed satisfaction over the various tools available to them on iNet, according to Rutt. For example, employers can conduct a keyword search of applicant resumes if they are searching for a specific qualification or educational background.

As of March 7, there were 1,077 internships posted on iNet and 1,169 registered employers, Principal said. On the same day, there were 2,036 jobs posted on the Cardinal Careers Web site. But unlike iNet, which only offers internships, Cardinal Careers encompasses internships as well as full-time, part-time and on-campus jobs.

The applicant pool for iNet internships is much larger than that of Cardinal Careers because iNet is available to students from all eight schools, whereas Cardinal Careers caters exclusively to Stanford students. But Principal believes that the growing number of internships available through iNet will circumvent any rise in competition for internships among Stanford students.

“The number of internships has shot up so dramatically, we’re able to share more of these jobs with students,” Principal said.