UK businesses who are investing in newspaper advertising to recruit graduate talent may be wasting their money, a survey warns.

Recruitment agency Reed Employment surveyed more than 400 graduates and found that 89 per cent of them use the web to search for jobs.

Eighteen per cent use specialist recruitment agencies, 8 per cent apply in person and just 3 per cent regularly check newspaper job sections.

The research also found that 80 per cent of respondents claim to be avid users of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

It seems that speed is the name of the game for graduate jobseekers, with 57 per cent stating they spend less than an hour researching for jobs; 18 per cent spending between one and two hours; just 15 per cent spending over two hours and 9 per cent claiming they just turn up at interviews, without having researched the company at all.

Stephen Harrison, Reed Graduates: "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."

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

A half claimed they were not given enough information before their interviews.

The kinds of information most in demand were details about training and development opportunities, the office location and surrounding amenities, the office culture, and the salary on offer.

Stephen Harrison, operations manager at Reed Graduates, said: "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."

"It is however, worrying that even with so much information about companies available on the internet, many graduates are not spending enough time preparing and researching for job interviews.

"Companies expect interview candidates to have done their homework and any graduate looking for their first step on the career ladder should realise this.

"However, the onus is also on companies to ensure their websites are up to date; their job descriptions are as detailed as possible and for recruitment consultants to ensure that jobseekers are as prepared as possible for their interviews," he concluded.