Time to hire

What it is

Time to hire is the number of days between the moment a candidate applies for a job and the moment they accept your offer. It measures how quickly your team moves one person through the hiring process once they are in it.

It is often confused with time to fill. Time to fill starts when the job is opened or approved, before anyone applies. Time to hire starts with the candidate, so it focuses on the speed of your own steps: screening, interviews, decisions and the offer.

Why it matters

Good candidates rarely wait around. If your process drags, people accept other offers, lose interest or start to wonder how the company makes decisions. A slow process also keeps managers short-staffed for longer and pushes more work onto the team.

Time to hire also sits next to other hiring numbers. A long process usually raises cost per hire, because recruiters and interviewers spend more hours on each role. Tracking it helps you see where your process gets stuck.

How it works

The basic formula for one hire is simple:

• Time to hire = date the offer was accepted minus date the candidate applied (or entered your pipeline)
• Average time to hire = total days for all hires in the period / number of hires
• Stage time = days a candidate spends in each step, such as screening or final interview

Most applicant tracking systems record these dates, so you can pull the numbers without building spreadsheets.

Example: a company makes three hires in March. The first took 18 days from application to accepted offer, the second took 30 days and the third took 24 days. That is 72 days in total, so the average time to hire is 72 / 3 = 24 days. Looking at stage times, the team sees that most of the delay came from waiting for the hiring manager to give interview feedback.

Best practices

• Define the start date the same way for every role, for example the day the application arrives.
• Break the number down by stage so you can find the slowest step.
• Set a target for how fast interviewers give feedback, such as within two working days.
• Compare roles with similar seniority, since senior hires usually take longer.
• Keep candidates updated at each step so a longer process does not feel like silence.

Common mistakes

• Mixing up time to hire and time to fill, then comparing numbers that measure different things.
• Speeding up by cutting steps that check for fit, which can lead to early turnover later.
• Forgetting the gap between the accepted offer and the start date. Good preboarding keeps new hires engaged during that time.
• Looking only at the company average and missing roles that are much slower.

FAQ

What is the difference between time to hire and time to fill?

Time to fill starts when a job is opened. Time to hire starts when a candidate applies. Time to fill is usually longer because it also includes the time spent finding candidates.

What is a good time to hire?

There is no single right number. It depends on the role, the industry and how many people apply. Compare against your own past results and work on bringing the slowest stages down.

Does time to hire include the time until the new hire starts?

No. The clock usually stops when the offer is accepted. The wait until the start date is tracked separately, and the period after day one is covered by measures like time to productivity.