Time to hire serves as a prevalent metric in the world of recruitment. It gauges the duration, measured in days, between a candidate submitting their application for a job and the subsequent acceptance of a job offer by the same candidate. In today’s competitive job market, improving time to hire has become a priority for many companies. Explore our guide on what time to hire is and what are some ways to improve this metric for your organization.
What Time to Hire Is Used For
Time to hire measures the recruitment cycle time from the following key stages:
- Application submission
- Applicant screening and initial interviews
- Assessment and selection processes
- Final round interviews
- Offer negotiation
- Offer acceptance
The time to hire metric is an important recruitment key performance indicator (KPI) that helps identify process bottlenecks and opportunities to hire candidates faster.
This metric also reflects the efficiency of an organization’s recruitment process while also telling a story about the candidate experience. A shorter time to hire not only enhances the candidate experience but also reduces the likelihood of losing top talent to competitors. On the other hand, a prolonged time to hire may result in increased costs, productivity losses, and a negative impact on the employer brand.
Learn more about other HR metrics and how to track them in our guide.
How to Calculate Time to Hire
Computing the time to hire for your organization involves tracking the various stages of the hiring process:
- Define the start point: This is the day the candidate submitted his application for the open position.
- Choose the end point: This is the day when the candidate formally accepts the job offer.
- Track key milestones: Break down the recruitment process into key milestones, such as:
-
- Job posting date
- Application submission date
- Initial screening/interview date
- Further interviews or assessments
- Job offer extended date
- Date of job offer acceptance
- Calculate time intervals: Measure the time intervals between each milestone. Subtract the start date of one stage from the start date of the next stage to determine the duration for each stage.
- Sum up the intervals: Add up all the time intervals to obtain the total time it took to complete the hiring process.
- (Optional) Compute average time to hire: Calculate the average time to hire over a specific period by dividing the total time to hire by the number of hires during that period.
Example:
- Start point: Application submission date (Jan. 10, 2023)
- End point: Candidate accepts job offer (March 15, 2023)
Key Milestones
- Job posting date: Jan. 1, 2023
- Application submission date: Jan. 10, 2023
- Initial screening/interview date: Jan. 20, 2023
- Further interviews/assessments: Feb. 5, 2023
- Job offer extended date: Feb. 15, 2023
- Job offer accepted date: March 15, 2023
Calculation:
- Time from application submission to initial screening: Jan. 20, 2023 – Jan. 10, 2023 = 10 days
- Time from initial screening to further interviews: Feb. 5, 2023 – Jan. 20, 2023 = 16 days
- Time from further interviews to job offer extended: Feb. 15, 2023 – Feb. 5, 2023 = 10 days
- Time from job offer extended to offer accepted: March 15, 2023 – Feb. 15, 2023 = 28 days
Total time to hire: 10 days + 16 days + 10 days + 28 days = 64 days
Key Considerations in Measuring Time to Hire
Here are some key considerations when computing time to hire:
- Metrics: Track time to hire in working days or calendar weeks for consistency. Metrics may also look at average vs median hiring times.
- Tools: Leverage your HRIS, ATS, or analytics tools to calculate and report on time to hire. These systems provide visibility into the hiring process.
- Segmentation: Break down time to hire by factors like location, department, hiring manager or role level to identify problem areas.
Difference Between Time to Hire and Time to Fill
The metrics time to hire and time to fill can be confusing. Here are the key differences:
Time to Hire | Time to Fill |
|---|---|
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In short, time to hire is a subset of the time to fill metric. You can also think of time to hire as recruiting speed—how rapidly an organization can identify and engage with the ideal candidate for a role, and move them through the various stages of the recruitment pipeline.
From the previous example above,
- Start point: Job posting date (Jan. 1, 2023)
- End point: Candidate accepts job offer (March 15, 2023)
Calculation:
- Time from job posting to application submission: Jan. 10, 2023 – Jan. 1, 2023 = 9 days
- Time from application submission to initial screening: Jan. 20, 2023 – Jan. 10, 2023 = 10 days
- Time from initial screening to further interviews: Feb. 5, 2023 – Jan. 20, 2023 = 16 days
- Time from further interviews to job offer extended: Feb. 15, 2023 – Feb. 5, 2023 = 10 days
- Time from job offer extended to offer accepted: March 15, 2023 – Feb. 15, 2023 = 28 days
Total time to fill: 9 days + 10 days + 16 days + 10 days + 28 days = 73 days
The Cost of a Long Time to Hire
Extended time to hire has tangible costs for an organization. When open roles remain unfilled for too long, it leads to:
- Financial costs: Existing employees working overtime to cover open positions can result in increased wage costs. Open requisitions also impact productivity—roles supporting revenue generation or operations that remain open for weeks longer than necessary represent lost potential.
- Hiring budget overages: The recruiting team may need to increase job board spending, candidate travel reimbursements, or external agency fees to fill roles if the process is inefficient. These extra expenses eat into the department’s budget.
- Impacts candidate experience: Candidates may lose excitement for the role or withdraw from the process if it drags on. This hurts your talent brand.
- Delays in hiring: Mission-critical roles that are needed to hit growth targets or support new projects may remain unfilled for too long while the process lags. This directly impacts business objectives.
- Turnover ripple effect: One vacant role can leave other employees feeling overburdened. This may cause additional stress and turnover in the organization.
Tips to Improve Time to Hire
There are a variety of strategies organizations can use to optimize their hiring process and reduce time to hire:
- Streamline screening stages: Remove unnecessary phone screens or interviews. Provide clear, defined screening and assessment criteria upfront to avoid delays.
- Set expectations with hiring managers: Enforce limits on time spent reviewing resumes and providing interview feedback. Implement SLAs for each hiring stage.
- Leverage recruitment technology: Applicant tracking systems, video interviewing, and assessment tools can decrease time spent on manual tasks. You can also check our guide on the best applicant tracking systems for small businesses.
- Develop talent pools/pipelines: Maintain ongoing relationships with passive candidates so they’re ready to interview when a role opens.
- Reduce application review time: Use algorithms or chatbots to screen applications faster. Implement structured interviews for more efficient assessment.
- Target passive candidates: Tap into your employee referral program and networks to find candidates not actively job searching. This provides a jump start.
- Shorten interviews: Limit first round interviews to 30 minutes. Use structured interviews focused only on critical competencies.
Metrics Beyond Time to Hire
While time to hire is a critical metric, it’s essential to complement it with other key performance indicators. Quality of hire, retention rates, and diversity & inclusion metrics provide a holistic view of the recruitment process. A well-rounded approach ensures that organizations are not solely fixated on speed but also on making informed, sustainable hiring decisions.
Quality of Hire
Quality of hire evaluates the overall performance and impact of new hires on the organization. It involves assessing factors such as the candidate’s job performance, skills alignment, and cultural fit. Surveys, performance evaluations, and on-the-job assessments can be used to measure the quality of hire.
Check our guide on how to do performance reviews.
Retention Rate
Retention rate measures the percentage of new hires who remain with the organization over a specific period. Monitoring retention helps evaluate the success of the hiring process in not only attracting but also retaining top talent.
Read on ways to improve employee retention.
Diversity Metrics
Track metrics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, such as the diversity of applicants, candidates, and hires. This helps organizations assess the effectiveness of their efforts to promote diversity in the workforce.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Time to hire is a vital metric because it directly impacts an organization’s ability to attract and secure top talent. A shorter time to hire enhances the candidate experience, reduces the risk of losing candidates to competitors, and minimizes costs associated with prolonged vacancies.
Technology, including applicant tracking systems, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, plays a crucial role in improving time to hire. These tools automate repetitive tasks, enhance candidate matching, and contribute to overall process efficiency.
The ideal time to hire varies based on factors such as industry, job role, and organizational needs. Rather than aiming for a universal ideal, organizations should focus on benchmarking their time to hire against industry standards and continuously optimizing their processes for efficiency.
A positive candidate experience is instrumental in reducing time to hire. Streamlining the application process, providing timely feedback, and maintaining transparent communication contribute to a favorable candidate experience, making candidates more likely to accept offers promptly.
Continuous monitoring and optimization allow organizations to stay agile and responsive to changes in the recruitment landscape. Regular analysis of recruitment metrics provides insights into the effectiveness of strategies, enabling organizations to make data-driven decisions and refine their processes over time.
Yes, a longer time to hire can negatively impact an organization’s competitiveness. In a competitive job market, top talent may be attracted to organizations that demonstrate efficiency in their hiring processes. A prolonged time to hire increases the risk of losing qualified candidates to faster-moving competitors.
Bottom Line
The time to hire metric is essential for organizations to evaluate the efficiency of their recruitment process. A shorter time to hire is often desirable as it indicates that the company can quickly identify, evaluate, and secure qualified candidates, reducing the impact of the vacancy on productivity and operations. However, it’s also crucial to balance speed with thoroughness to ensure the right candidate is selected for the job.
