Job-hopping is no longer taboo for those seeking to climb the corporate ladder as the gulf between supply and demand of experienced business people widens.

Shortages of experienced managers and executives, especially in the technology industry, is shifting the balance of power from recruiters to candidates.

Ms Tara Nolan, who runs PricewaterhouseCooper's (PwC) executive search and selection section, says people spend between six months and two years in a position before moving.

She said stocks and equity stakes still played a major part in remuneration packages, but flexibility in work style and the opportunities for future development a company offered a candidate were becoming increasingly important.

There had been an explosion in possibilities in the technology and IT sector and Ms Nolan said in some cases chief executive officers of companies had taken a cut in salary to move to new companies offering share options.

The demand for middle and senior managers, especially in the financial services and technology sectors, had led to an increase of 7 to 10 per cent in salaries.

However, this did not reflect the large overall increase in remuneration packages contained in share options and equity stakes.

Ms Nolan said expatriates who had made it abroad were able to command higher salaries because of their international experience, and because of a dearth of natives qualified in niche areas.

More than half the people recruited by PwC are now drawn from abroad and most are returning emigrants.

But recruiters increasingly have to look to places like Eastern Europe and India for suitable technically qualified people, said Ms Nolan.

Such labour shortages are driving the growth of the recruitment sector with an average charge for headhunting an executive in the region of 28 to 33 per cent of the annual cash salary of the recruit.

If the executive is recruited through more general advertising methods, the charge is between 25 and 28 per cent of the overall salary.

Ms Nolan said the appointment of chief financial officers was proving a major area of activity.

She said that CFOs, especially those with experience of taking companies public, could now command cash salaries of anything from £75,000 (€95 230) to £250,000 excluding share options and other bonuses.

Some company managing directors are now turning down salary offers of more than £200,000.

Sign-up bonuses may be associated more with high-profile sportsmen than company executives and managers, but now firms are offering bonuses which in some cases make up as much as one-third of an overall package.

The pull of the green green grass of home is still strong for the Irish abroad. Mr Steve Green, an IT recruitment specialist with HRM recruitment, said that expats in their late 20s and early 30s who were looking to settle down still found the Republic the most attractive option.

People who had spent anything from five to 15 years in London had had enough and want to see their children educated in an Irish school, Mr Green said.

Even though many people are willing to move to the Republic because of a perceived attractiveness in lifestyle, companies still have to hunt vigorously for people experienced in the technology sector.

An e-commerce architect with only five to seven year's management experience can command a salary 60 per cent higher (£80,000) than that of his bluechip counterpart (£50,000), Mr Green said.

Due to the recent drop in the value of tech stocks, Mr Green said some companies had gone as far as making presentations to potential recruits to reassure them about the company's future performance.

This did not affect blue-chip or multinational companies, he said. For senior executives a good spread between salary, bonuses and pension is important for tax reasons and Mr Green said pensions can make up to 33 per cent of a package.

House prices have presented a huge difficulty for consultants trying to attract Irish people abroad back to the Republic.

Mr Ray Carolan, a recruitment specialist with KPMG Consulting's executive search and selection arm, said that the condition of the property market with its inflated house prices had stopped many skilled people returning.

Even though relocation packages for executives covered the cost of moving they did not alleviate the problems associated with finding a suitable home, he said.

Loyalty has all but disappeared from many sectors of industry, but Mr Carolan said the phenomenon of people moving from job to job on a regular basis was confined mainly to sectors where demand for skilled people far outstripped supply.

Many technology companies want relatively young senior management because the managing directors are often in their early 30s.

There was a lot of interest from young middle managers working in the old economy to move to the new, Mr Carolan said.

KPMG source around 20 to 25 per cent of its executives from the Irish abroad, but increasingly people from such countries as New Zealand, South Africa, France and the UK are showing an interest in moving to the Republic.

One of the main attractions for people moving to a technology company was the offer of share options.

Even though the performance of these stocks has been poor over the last few weeks, Mr John Glenny, a partner in Merc partners, said that shares were still an attractive option.

Managers on salaries of £40,000 to £60,000 could be making between £100,000 and £500,000 from their share options over three or four years, he said.

The recent turbulence in the stock market had brought reality back to the expected value of share options and had led some people to rethink stock as a substantial proportion of their remuneration, Mr Glenny said.

Companies are realising that there is no point in promising performance that their share price cannot deliver.

Middle management is being attracted from traditional industries by technology companies, but in some cases not for the most obvious of reasons.

Dynamic new-economy companies offered more of an opportunity than traditional industries to move up the ladder quickly because of throughput and higher levels of growth, Mr Glenny said.

Movement between companies is no longer a problem as people recognise that the concept of a job for life is gone and they are willing to make the necessary steps to move up the career ladder.

For expats in executive positions living in London, house prices have not provided such an obstacle to returning to the Republic because of the sterling differential and the fact that house prices there are comparable to here, Mr Glenny said.

The way of life the Republic offered was still one of the main reasons people moved back.