what role do ALUMS and INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEW play?

1. I'm at a semi-target very decent name school but it's not recruited by some BBs. I spoke with a high level alum but he's retired. He forwarded my resume to HR. Now what? Does that mean that his passing along of my resume was completely useless? Wouldn't my application through the online blackbox be passed to the HR also? How do alums passing your resume to HR help in any way? Because so far all I've gotten from HR is a message saying they got it.

2. Everyone here stresses networking/getting informational interviews. Again, what use are they? We all know that they dont really provide any new information but get you some face time with an alum right? I know this could potentially be very helpful if the informational-granting alum is also a recruiter for your school. But how about your average John Smith who graduated from Harvard in 1984 and you just emailed saying "I'm so interested in your life story...". How is speaking with John Smith going to get you an interview? Sure miracles can happen and that he'll put his job on the line and demand that you be given an interview but chances are he's not. What John Smith will most likely do is give you some advice about the lifestyle of an ibanking and some of the choices that he made. Yes, those are valuable advice but not really pertinent to getting ibanking interviews. He may be able to forward your resume to HR but that goes to my first point, what does getting your resume to HR even mean?

These are the banks that dont recruit on campus so it's not like the alums are the recruiters. The whole reason why I'm doing this is because I'm wondering if there's even a need to go mass-spamming alums. Thanks!