FISH4JOBS is officially the UK's most visited online recruitment site, with more than 1.3 million users every month, according to a new survey.

That's nearly 300,000 users more than its closest rival.

Simon Devitt, managing director of fish4jobs, identified two major contributors to this success.

He said: "fish4jobs, which is co-owned by four regional newspaper groups including The Basingstoke Extra's parent company, Newsquest, has developed a strong relationship with readers of local papers through regular advertising and branding in the local press up and down the country - as a result, it has very strong regional usership across the UK.

"More and more people, from all walks of life across the UK, are using the internet to look for jobs. Online recruitment is now used by almost all sectors of the workforce, from school leavers and graduates, through to manual workers and career professionals.

"It has definitely come of age and has become a mass market recruitment medium."

The independent study of 24 leading recruitment sites gathered statistical data from ABCe (Audit Bureau of Circulation electronic) and surveys completed by more than 18,000 online jobseekers, and provides detailed information on the types of users visiting each site.

According to the survey:

the average salary of fish4jobs users is £20,000 per year

the average age of users is 31

fifty-nine per cent of fish4jobs users are female

around 163,000 monthly visitors are involved in part-time employment.

The survey dispels the preconception that exists that online recruitment is only used by certain specialist sectors, such as IT or media professionals.

As more of the UK population goes online - currently more than 50 per cent - and recruitment sites carry a wider choice of jobs than ever before, online recruitment is being used increasingly in a complementary fashion alongside established methods of job hunting, such as local newspapers, which still remain very popular.