Time to Hire
Updated
Definition
Time to hire is the number of calendar days between a candidate entering the hiring process and accepting an offer. It shows how quickly candidates move through hiring, not how long the role has been open.
TL;DR: Time to hire is the number of calendar days between a candidate entering your hiring process and accepting your offer. To make the metric useful, your team must agree on one start point, one end point, and one calculation method.
When someone says time to hire is “too slow,” the next question should be: when are you starting the clock?
Is it when someone applies? When they enter your pipeline? When a recruiter first engages them? Small differences in where you start and stop can change the number—and make comparisons a lot less useful.
The solution is to define the metric clearly, measure it consistently, and use it to identify the exact part of the hiring process that’s holding candidates up.
What Time to Hire Measures
Time to hire measures the number of calendar days from a defined candidate start point to offer acceptance.
It shows how long candidates spend moving through your hiring process—not how long a role remains open before someone accepts an offer.
But the starting point can vary by organization, so your first task is to choose one and document it.
Use this checklist to create a consistent definition:
- Start event: Candidate applied, entered the pipeline, passed the initial screen, or another defined event
- End event: Offer accepted
- Included candidate types: External applicants, sourced candidates, referrals, or internal candidates
- Excluded cases: Withdrawn candidates, rejected candidates, evergreen roles, or paused searches
- Reporting level: Overall, role, department, source, location, recruiter, or hiring manager
Metric Definition Sheet
| Field | Your Team’s Definition |
|---|---|
| Metric name | Time to hire |
| Start date | Candidate applied, entered the pipeline, passed the initial screen, or another defined event |
| End date | Offer accepted |
| Days counted | Calendar days |
| Candidates included | Define included candidate types |
| Candidates excluded | Define exceptions |
| Reported by | Role, department, source, location, or another category |
Complete this definition before using benchmarks or setting goals. Otherwise, you may compare numbers that look similar but represent different processes.
Why Teams Track Time to Hire
When hiring slows down, everyone feels it: recruiters chase updates, hiring managers ask for status reports, and candidates wonder whether they’re still being considered.
Time to hire helps reveal where those delays occur.
It should be considered alongside broader talent acquisition metrics, because speed alone doesn’t tell the whole story. The metric becomes useful when you know what questions to ask.
- Where do candidates wait longest? Identify the stage with the largest gap between activities.
- Which roles move fastest? Compare roles with similar hiring processes before judging performance.
- Which sources convert faster? Examine whether referrals, inbound applicants, sourced candidates, and agency candidates move at different speeds.
- Where do approvals stall? Look for delays before the job opens, before offers are issued, or before changes are approved.
- Where does interview feedback slow down? Measure how long interviewers take to submit notes.
- Where does candidate communication lag? Check the time between stage changes and follow-up messages.
Treat time to hire as a clue, not a scoreboard. It tells you where to investigate, but it doesn’t explain the full story by itself.
How to Calculate Time to Hire
The formula is straightforward. The harder part is deciding which event counts as day one.
For one hire, count the calendar days between your chosen start date and the date the candidate accepts the offer. To calculate an average, add the time to hire for all accepted candidates in the group, then divide by the number of hires.
Time-to-Hire Formula
Time to hire = Offer acceptance date − Candidate start date
Average Time-to-Hire Formula
Average time to hire = Total time to hire for all hires ÷ Number of hires
Follow these steps:
- Choose the start date, such as application, pipeline entry, or completion of the initial screen.
- Set offer acceptance as the end date.
- Calculate the number of calendar days between those dates.
- Add the results for all hires in the reporting group.
- Divide the total by the number of hires.
Worked Example
- Candidate: Candidate name
- Role: Role title
- Start date: March 1
- Offer accepted: March 19
- Time to hire: 18 calendar days
Average Example
- Hire 1: 18 days
- Hire 2: 24 days
- Hire 3: 21 days
- Total: 63 days
- Number of hires: 3
- Average time to hire: 21 days
Document the formula in one place and share it with recruiters, hiring managers, recruiting operations, and finance. This prevents conflicting reports later.
Time to Fill vs. Time to Hire
Time to fill and time to hire both measure hiring speed, but they start at different moments.
Time to fill usually begins when a role opens or a job requisition is approved. Time to hire begins when a candidate enters the hiring process.
| Question | Time to Fill | Time to Hire |
|---|---|---|
| What starts the clock? | Job opening, requisition approval, or role approval | Candidate application, pipeline entry, or another defined candidate start point |
| What stops the clock? | Offer acceptance or the role being filled | Offer acceptance |
| What does it measure? | How long it takes to fill an open role | How quickly candidates move through the process |
| Who usually owns improvements? | Recruiting leaders, workforce planning, finance, and hiring managers | Recruiters, hiring managers, interview teams, and recruiting operations |
| When should you use it? | Capacity planning, headcount planning, and vacancy forecasting | Candidate experience, funnel speed, and stage-by-stage process reviews |
| What can it hide when used alone? | A slow candidate process when the role sat unopened or paused | Delays in role approval or sourcing before candidates entered the process |
Use time to fill for vacancy planning and process capacity. Use time to hire to evaluate candidate movement through the funnel. Tracking both provides a more complete view.
What a Good Time to Hire Looks Like
There is no universal “good” time to hire. A senior technical role, field role, and customer support role may require different timelines—even within the same organization.
Benchmarks can still be useful, but only when you compare like with like: similar roles, markets, seniority levels, process steps, and hiring conditions.
Use this worksheet before turning a benchmark into a goal:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Role family | Engineering, sales, support, operations, field, or another category |
| Seniority level | Entry-level, mid-level, senior, or leadership |
| Location or market | Location, remote, hybrid, or region |
| Internal baseline | Your current average time to hire |
| External benchmark | Source, publication date, methodology, and average |
| Target range | Your realistic target range |
| Hiring-stage count | Number of steps from the start date to offer acceptance |
| Exception notes | Hard-to-fill role, limited candidate pool, approvals, or seasonality |
Compare roles that genuinely belong together. Don’t hold engineering, field, and support hiring to the same target simply because one company-wide average is easier to report.
How to Reduce Time to Hire Without Cutting Corners
“Speed up hiring” is too broad to be actionable. “Find the stage where candidates wait longest” gives your team a clear place to start.
A stage-by-stage audit can uncover idle time without forcing you to skip valuable conversations or assessments.
Bottleneck Audit Checklist
- Application review: How long do candidates wait before someone reviews their application?
- Screening handoffs: How much time passes between review and first recruiter contact?
- Scheduling: How many days does it take to book interviews?
- Interviewer availability: Are candidates waiting because calendars are difficult to coordinate?
- Feedback submission: How long do interviewers take to submit notes?
- Interview rounds: Are there steps that don’t meaningfully influence the final decision?
- Approvals: Where do requisition, compensation, or offer approvals stall?
- Offer turnaround: How long does it take to move from the final decision to a formal offer?
- Candidate follow-up: Are candidates left waiting after interviews or expressions of verbal interest?
A Simple Improvement Sequence
- Identify the longest wait. Find the stage with the largest delay.
- Fix that stage first. Change one handoff, scheduling process, feedback deadline, approval workflow, or communication step.
- Measure again. Review the next reporting cycle to determine whether the delay shrank, moved, or revealed another bottleneck.
If scheduling is the biggest source of delay, start with a focused resource on fast interview scheduling. If delays appear throughout the process, review these strategies to reduce time to hire.
Improve one choke point at a time. “Hiring is slow” is difficult to fix. “Feedback takes four days after onsite interviews” gives your team a concrete problem to solve.
Common Time-to-Hire Mistakes
If your time-to-hire report creates more questions than answers, the issue may be how the metric is defined or presented.
Watch for these common mistakes:
Using Different Start Dates Across Teams
If one team starts counting at application and another starts after screening, their averages don’t belong in the same comparison.
Combining Every Role Into One Benchmark
A blended average may work for a high-level executive summary, but it won’t tell recruiters where to improve. Segment results by relevant role families, locations, seniority levels, or processes.
Ignoring Time to Fill
You may accelerate candidate movement while still taking too long to approve, open, or source for the role. Track both metrics to see the full timeline.
Prioritizing Speed Over Outcomes
Faster isn’t always better. Monitor offer acceptance, candidate experience, quality signals, and retention alongside speed to make sure process changes aren’t creating new problems.
Treating Every Delay as a Recruiting Problem
Hiring managers, interviewers, finance, and other approvers often contribute to delays. Scheduling, feedback, approvals, and decisions require shared accountability.
If you’re standardizing reporting for the first time, don’t try to fix everything at once. Begin with one shared definition, one role family, and one actionable funnel view.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the definition of time to hire?
Time to hire is the number of days between a candidate entering your hiring process and accepting your offer.
The exact start point should be defined by your organization. Some teams count from application, while others count from pipeline entry or completion of an initial screen. Consistency matters more than the specific start point.
What is the average time to hire?
Average time to hire varies by industry, role, seniority, location, labor market, and hiring process.
A current external benchmark can provide context, but your internal baseline is usually more useful for setting goals. Compare similar roles and verify the source date and methodology before adopting an external average.
What is the difference between time to hire and time to fill?
Time to fill usually starts when a job opens or a requisition is approved. Time to hire starts when a candidate enters the hiring process.
Use time to fill for workforce planning, vacancies, and recruiting capacity. Use time to hire to evaluate how quickly candidates move from first touch to accepted offer.
What formula do you use to calculate time to hire?
Use the following formula:
Time to hire = Offer acceptance date − Candidate start date
To calculate an average, add the time to hire for each accepted candidate and divide by the number of hires.
Most teams use calendar days. Whatever method you choose, apply it consistently across all reports.
What is the 70/30 rule in hiring?
The 70/30 rule is not part of the standard time-to-hire formula. If your organization uses the phrase internally, define it separately to avoid confusing your reporting.
For time to hire, measure the period from your chosen candidate start point to offer acceptance.
Why do teams choose Lever?
Lever is an applicant tracking system and recruiting CRM for in-house talent acquisition teams at mid-sized and growing organizations.
It combines applicant tracking, candidate relationship management, configurable workflows, automation, and analytics so teams can keep hiring moving and identify where candidates may be waiting too long.
Make Time to Hire Useful
Slow hiring is often only part of the problem. Teams may also have a poorly defined clock, unclear bottlenecks, and reports that use inconsistent methods. Speed has a ceiling too: rushing a decision to improve the number can lead to a hiring mistake, and what a bad hire costs usually outweighs the days saved.
Once you define the metric, you can stop debating whether hiring is “too slow” and start identifying the stages that need attention.
Ready to keep candidates moving with less busywork? See how Lever helps teams track hiring progress, spot delays, and manage the process from first touch to final offer.