The National Online Recruitment Survey (NORAS) 2006, reveals that the average online job seeker is 34.4 years old, has 13.6 years’ work experience and earns £34,600.

This compares with 2002 when the survey was first carried out and the average candidate was 32.3 years old, had 10.5 years’ experience and commanded a salary of £22,700.

The 2006 survey, gathered from 18,724 people, also showed that the most popular way of applying for jobs was electronically (79%) with 43% emailing their CVs to employers and 28% completing online application forms. Just 6% of respondents said they put a hard copy of their CV in the post.

Tim Elkington, managing director of Enhance Media, the independent online recruitment specialists managing NORAS, said: “Our latest set of results show that online recruitment has come of age. Online recruitment is steadily attracting more senior candidates and with more people applying for and obtaining jobs than ever before, is proving to be a very successful way to find work.

“The UK online recruitment industry has been going for 10 years and according to Interactive Advertising Bureau statistics, is worth more than £200m - almost double what it was last year.”