When you have open positions, it’s important to find the right candidates quickly.
A lengthy, complex recruitment and hiring process can cause quality candidates to move on to competitors.
Time to fill and time to hire are essential metrics for evaluating and improving your recruitment and hiring.
Our guide at iprospectcheck outlines everything you need to know about these important metrics.
Key Takeways
• Time to fill refers to the number of working days from when a job requisition is submitted to when a candidate accepts a job offer.
• Time to hire refers to the number of working days from the date a qualified candidate applies to the date when they accept a job offer.
• Calculating your company’s time-to-fill and time-to-hire rates can help you identify areas for improvement within your recruitment and hiring processes, helping to reduce costs and enhance the candidate experience.
What is Time to Fill?
Time to fill is a metric that measures the time between the date when a hiring manager submits a requisition for an open job and the date when a candidate accepts the job offer.
Alternatively, some companies might calculate time to fill as starting on the date that human resources approves a job requisition or the date when an open position is advertised online.
However you calculate the start date, it’s important to remain consistent.
Why Should You Track Time to Fill?
1. Understand the Effectiveness of Recruiting Efforts
Calculating time to fill helps your company analyze and understand the effectiveness of your recruiting efforts.
This allows you to identify issues and make corrections for improvements.
2. Improve Recruitment Planning
When you know the average time to fill within your company, you can plan to start recruiting at an appropriate time.
You can also develop contingency plans while the position remains open and plan your onboarding process more effectively.
3. Correct Recruitment Inefficiencies
When you calculate time to fill, you can identify inefficiencies in your recruitment process and make changes to streamline your procedures.
Tracking time to fill reveals which jobs and departments take longer to fill than others.
You might also discover that certain talent recruitment platforms enable more efficient hiring processes than others, depending on the type of position.
4. Reduce Costs
The longer your company has positions open, the more resources your company will use.
Knowing your time to fill and taking steps to streamline your recruitment efforts can help reduce the following recruitment costs:
- Cost of long-running job advertisements
- Overtime costs to cover the work of the unfilled position
- Turnover costs caused by other employees’ stress and burnout
How to Calculate the Time to Fill
You can calculate the time to fill by team or organization-wide. To calculate this metric, count the total number of workdays from the time a job requisition is submitted and the date a candidate is hired.
Track this for each open position, add them up, and then divide them by the number of positions filled.
The formula for calculating your average time to fill is as follows:
(Workdays from requisition date to hiring date for position A) + (Workdays from requisition date to hiring date for position B) + Workdays from requisition date to hiring date for position C) + (etc.) / Number of positions filled = Time to Fill
You can also calculate the time to fill a specific position or by department. For example, it will likely take longer to fill an open position in your company’s legal department than it might to fill an entry-level job.
What Is the Benchmark for Time to Fill?
The benchmark for time to fill is the target average number of days it takes to fill open positions by position type and industry.
Your benchmark number will depend on the industry in which your company operates and the types of open jobs you have.
Compare your company’s time to fill with the average for your industry to evaluate the effectiveness of your recruitment operations and make adjustments as needed.
How to Reduce Time to Fill
1. Identify and Eliminate Bottlenecks
Once you’ve calculated your company’s average time to fill, you can identify and eliminate common problems that can slow your process down.
Communication breakdowns between the hiring manager and recruiter are common problems. To eliminate this issue, make sure that you have clearly defined objectives and deliverables, and schedule regular times to touch base.
Automation tools can also help to speed up slow processes.
2. Leverage Recruitment Tools
Automating repetitive recruitment tasks can greatly speed up the process. For example, use recruitment software to automatically link your open positions to social media and select job boards.
Consider a tool to schedule interviews to prevent key talent from going elsewhere because of scheduling delays.
Partner with a reliable background check provider like iprospectcheck to speed up pre-employment screens and reference checks.
3. Keep Previous Candidates in Your Talent Pool
You shouldn’t overlook previous candidates who have applied for positions in your company and who have been pre-screened and have relevant skills.
Reach out to previous candidates who might be a good fit for your current open positions to save money and time.
What is Time to Hire?
Time to hire is a metric of the amount of time it takes from the date a candidate applies for a position to the date they accept your job offer.
Why Track Time to Hire?
1. Reduce Hiring Delays
If you see that your company regularly experiences delays in time to hire, you can make adjustments to accelerate this process.
Delays during the time between when a candidate applies and when they receive a job offer can frustrate them and might encourage the candidate to move on to a competitor.
2. Improve Candidate Experiences
If your company has a long hiring process, your applicants might have a negative experience with your company.
This can negatively affect your company’s reputation, leading to greater difficulties in the future with attracting quality candidates.
Knowing your company’s time to hire and reducing the length of your hiring process can improve your applicants’ experiences.
3. Reduce Recruiting Costs
When you reduce your time to hire by implementing streamlined interviews, background checks, and test processes, you can save money on your recruitment efforts.
How to Calculate Time to Hire
You can calculate the time to hire organization-wide or by team.
To calculate the average time to hire, count the total number of working days spent hiring applicants for each position and divide that number by the total number of positions for which candidates were hired.
The formula will appear as follows:
(Working days from the date candidate A applied to the official hire date) + (Working days from the date candidate B applied to the official hire date) + (Working days from the date candidate C applied to the official hire date) + (etc.) / total number of positions hired = Time to Hire
For organization-wide data, use the information for hiring across your company. To calculate the time to hire for individual teams, use team-specific data.
What Is the Time to Hire Benchmark?
The average time to hire varies across industries. For example, it might take significantly longer to hire candidates for technology positions versus other roles.
Compare your company’s time to hire with the average for your industry and specific types of positions. Doing so can allow you to see whether you need to streamline your hiring process and increase its efficiency.
If you have a short time to hire, your company will be in a better position to attract and retain key talent by hiring them quickly after they apply.
The Josh Bersin Company and AMS released the Time to Hire Facebook, a report that tracked the 2022 time to hire data by industry and released projections for 2023.
According to data contained in this report, companies are spending more time to hire than ever.
Some notable examples from the report include:
- Energy and defense industry – longest time to hire at 67 days
- Professional services – length time to hire average at 47 days
- Investment banking – large range in time to hire from 21 to more than 60 days
- Consumer banking – Matched the average time to hire but expected to increase by two days
- Retail – Shortest time to hire of around 14 days
- Tech and media – Low time-to-hire rates of around 20 days
- Transportation – Smallest range in time to hire across positions
What Does a Long Time-to-Hire Rate Mean?
If your company has a lengthy time to hire, it might indicate your recruitment process has one of the following problems:
- Recruiters aren’t getting back to applicants in a reasonable time because of the sheer number.
- Your company isn’t posting open positions in the right channels.
- Your company isn’t posting open positions enough.
- Your company doesn’t have enough hiring managers to conduct interviews or review assessments.
- Your company relies on overly complicated hiring processes.
- Your background checks are taking too long to complete.
How to Reduce Time to Hire
To reduce your company’s hiring time, take the following steps:
1. Calculate Time Spent Per Phase
Take a look at the various phases of your hiring process, and measure how much time is spent in each one.
Looking at how much time it takes for a candidate to move from one phase to the next can help you identify whether your team is spending too much time on a single phase.
2. Calculate Time to Hire by Team
Calculating each team’s time to hire can help to identify whether a particular team is taking too long to hire as compared to others.
If you find that one team’s lengthy hiring process is inflating your company’s average time to hire, you can address the issue with the hiring manager to determine why.
3. Conduct Interview Training
Conducting interview training can help hiring managers and recruiters quickly identify candidates who are the most qualified.
4. Simplify Your Application Process
Creating a simple application process can accelerate the hiring process.
If your application is overly complex, qualified candidates might give up and move on to other opportunities.
5. Use Skills Assessments
Using skills assessments as a part of your application can help to quickly pre-vet candidates and identify those who have the necessary skills for the job.
This can help to reduce the number of candidates who move on to the next phase.
6. Use Customized Templates
Create and use customized email templates to communicate with candidates during the hiring process, which can reduce how much time you spend on scheduling.
7. Partner With a Reliable Background Screening Provider
Outsource your pre-employment screens to a reliable third-party provider like iprospectcheck.
Because of our extensive experience, resources, and cutting-edge research methodologies, we can quickly return comprehensive, comprehensive, and up-to-date background screens to our clients, greatly speeding the hiring process.
Know Before You Hire
Time to Fill vs Time to Hire: Key Differences
Many people use time to hire and time to fill interchangeably, but it’s a good idea to treat these metrics separately.
At the basic level, time to fill vs. time to hire measure different periods by using different starting points for counting.
For example, you might begin counting your time to fill before you have published an open position. By contrast, you won’t start counting the time to hire until your top candidate applies.
Your time to fill focuses on the steps and policies your company uses to recruit, select, interview, and hire new candidates.
Your time to hire focuses on the experiences your candidates have with your hiring process.
Both metrics are important for determining the effectiveness of your recruitment and hiring processes and improving candidate experience.
Streamline Your Hiring Process With iprospectcheck
Reducing your company’s time-to-fill and time-to-hire rates can help your company save money, quickly find the right candidates, improve candidate experiences, and protect your reputation.
If your recruitment and hiring processes are overly complex and lengthy, you could lose quality candidates to your competitors.
At iprospectcheck, we provide a full suite of background checks and other services to companies to facilitate a smoother, faster hiring process and ensure our clients can quickly hire the right candidates.
To learn more about our services and receive a free quote, call us today: (888) 509-1979.
DISCLAIMER: The resources provided here are for educational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. Consult your counsel if you have legal questions related to your specific practices and compliance with applicable laws.
FAQ
What is the industry standard for time to fill?
The time to fill varies across industries.
You should compare your company’s time to fill to others in your industry and aim to reduce it to around 20 days.
What is the average time to hire?
The average time to hire varies across industries. The Time to Hire Facebook by the Josh Bersin Company found that the overall average time to hire in 2022 was 43 days and was expected to reach 44 days in 2023.
This is not optimal as candidates who experience a lengthy time to hire might grow frustrated and move on to other opportunities.
Should time to fill include weekends?
You should exclude weekends and legal holidays when calculating your company’s time-to-fill rates.
Since your company’s recruitment team and hiring managers aren’t available on weekends and legal holidays to perform work, those dates should not be included in your calculations.
