Welcome to Massive Monday – the name that recruiters have for the first day of the first full working week since the festive break.

Apparently, this is the day when people who are fed up with their jobs finally decide to do something about it – and recruitment companies, large and small, and in every sphere, see website traffic surge.

The biggest recruitment website, reed.co.uk, says that today will be its busiest day of the year – which is why it premiered its new TV advertising campaign yesterday evening.

Reed is expecting 1m job applications overall just this week, and is predicting a second successive record January, up from last year’s record start to the year.

Reed is currently carrying some 3,500 estate and letting agency vacancies on its platform, with a very large number posted on Friday, ready and waiting for today’s Massive Monday audience.

New vacancies on the Reed platform include managerial jobs at LSL brands Your Move, Reeds Rains and Davis Tate, several roles at Winkworth and Connells, plus jobs posted by specialist recruiters including AMR Group, Buzzrecruit, Deverell Smith, and Rayner Personnel.

New jobs posted on Reed by Deverell Smith include one for a Mandarin-speaking property manager in prime central London, as well as sales and lettings negotiator roles. An advert on the Reed site from online agent Yopa is looking for an experienced agent in the Portsmouth area who is ‘hungry for success’.

Rayner Personnel is one firm expecting today to be a Massive Monday.

Josh Rayner, founder of the recruitment firm and EYE columnist, said: “Job searches surge in January, particularly on the first Monday back to work after the New Year.”

His firm has 800 vacancies at the moment.

While he said this is about average at any time of the year, the vacancies are likely to receive far more attention than usual from today’s browsers.

However, Rayner points out that estate agency staff wanting to move on need to be motivated about their futures, and not be simply fed up with their current situation.

He said: “The competition for exceptional candidates is fierce. Anyone can sell or list in a good market, but not in a challenging one.”

There is, of course, a catch for those employers looking for star recruits.

Many of today’s job seekers may start looking – but they’ll be biding their time until last year’s bonus has been paid in March.