Nearly 90% of graduates claim they only ever search for jobs online, according to new research by Reed Employment.

The survey of 400 graduates registered on reed.co.uk found 89% solely use the web to look for work; 18% use specialist recruitment agencies; 8% apply in person and 3% regularly check newspaper job sections.

Meanwhile, 80% of respondents also claim to be avid users of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

It appears graduate jobseekers are in a rush to find work with 57% stating they spend less than an hour researching for jobs; 18% spending between one and two hours; just 15% spending over two hours and 9% claiming they just turn up at interviews, without having researched the company at all.

While this could be down to laziness, it does appear that graduate jobseekers want more information provided in job descriptions and from recruitment consultants.

Around 50% claimed they were not given enough information before their interviews. The kinds of information most in demand were details about training and development opportunities (40%); the office location and surrounding amenities (17%); the office culture (15%), and the salary on offer (12%).

Stephen Harrison, operations manager at Reed Graduates, stated: "The Facebook generation of graduates clearly is more receptive to receiving information online than in print format. To attract top graduates, businesses will need to rethink the ways in which they recruit ensuring that online recruitment and perhaps even social networking sites are included. Equally, they may wish to introduce innovative new mediums such as video recruitment as part of their strategy."