­Employers need to fill job vacancies within 67 working days (14 working weeks) before tech professionals assume it's a job no one wants, according to research carried out by Randstad Technologies.

Randstad asked 2,001 members of the public, "How many working days does a vacancy for a permanent job have to be open before it starts to look like a bad job that no one wants?"

The UK's working population said they thought a post has to be vacant 74 days before it looks like a bad job that no one wants, one working week more than tech professionals.

In a similar survey, Randstad found that, on average, professionals in tech or IT jobs feel they currently have to perform the job of 1.5 people meaning they are covering 50% more work than one person should be; the equivalent of fitting an additional two and a half days worth of work into the ordinary working week.

Mike Beresford, managing director of Randstad Technologies, said, "T ech professionals are far more concerned about the length of time a vacancy's been advertised than the rest of the UK's workforce. They work in a fast paced world which rapidly evolves every day. A stagnant recruitment process signals alarm bells."

As part of the research, recruitment consultants working at Randstad Technologies were asked what the ideal length of time was to fill a vacancy, balancing the need to secure the best candidate for the job and the need for organisations to fill a skills gap. The poll found that given those criteria Randstad's consultants thought 29 days (just under 6 working weeks) was the ideal.