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August 14, 2025 
11 min read
Recruitment is packed with metrics, from cost per hire to quality of hire. But, two in particular stand out: time to fill and time to hire.
While these terms get thrown around interchangeably, they reveal different insights into your talent acquisition (TA) speed and effectiveness. If finding the right talent takes you months, understanding these metrics can help you hire faster and boost your recruitment team’s productivity.
| Time to fill | Time to hire | |
| Definition | Days from job requisition approval to offer acceptance | Days from candidate application to offer acceptance |
| Perspective | Organization-centric | Candidate-centric |
| Primary focus | Internal process efficiency | Recruitment agility and candidate journey |
| Who it impacts most | HR operations, recruiters, department heads | Candidates, hiring managers, TA leaders |
| Used for | Workforce planning, resource allocation | Candidate experience, process speed |
| What it reveals | Delays in starting the search or approval bottlenecks | Gaps in engagement, scheduling, or decision-making |
| Example scenario #1 | Role sits open for three weeks before being posted → long time to fill, short time to hire | Candidate hired in five days → fast hire, but late start |
| Example scenario #2 | Job is posted immediately, but candidate funnel is slow → short time to fill, long time to hire | Delay occurs in screening and interview stage |
| Optimization strategy | Streamline internal approvals and build proactive pipelines | Automate communication and reduce interview lag |
Time to fill is a recruitment metric that measures the days from job requisition approval to candidate offer acceptance. It’s your recruitment process from start to finish.
Some teams define it differently based on their needs. Instead of starting when the requisition gets approved, time to fill might begin when:
Either way, time to fill helps you measure your entire recruitment process for more strategic workforce planning. A longer time to fill often signals back-end problems, such as approval delays or ineffective workflows.
Count the calendar days from the date of job requisition approval to the date of offer acceptance. Simple as that.
Example: Leadership approves a job requisition on July 19, and a candidate accepts your offer on August 22. Your time to fill is 34 days. You can also use a spreadsheet. Put the job approval date in one cell and the offer acceptance date in another. Then subtract: =B1-A1 (where A1 is approval date and B1 is acceptance date).
Pro tip: Spreadsheets work in a pinch, but manual data entry is a pain. Use an applicant tracking system (ATS) instead to automatically measure and average your time to fill across various roles for accurate, real-time tracking.
Companies’ average time to fill is 54 days, according to 2022 SHRM benchmarking data. If yours is higher than this or your industry average, try the strategies below.
Did you know? Don’t chase the shortest time to fill possible. Going too fast hurts your team’s ability to source and assess the best candidates and can push leadership to make hasty hiring decisions. Find the sweet spot between speed and quality.
Time to fill suffers when your team spends too long in each recruitment stage. Combat this with structured hiring that reduces bias and hits business goals.
Start with a kickoff meeting that brings together all stakeholders, including executives, hiring managers, and recruiters, to discuss:
This meeting standardizes your process for efficiency. You’ll create templates for job postings, interviews, and scorecards while clarifying what each stakeholder needs to succeed.
For example, hiring managers may need to work with the TA and HR departments to develop a business proposal that clarifies costs, headcount requirements, and the return on investment (ROI) of a new hire. Submitting this with job requests ensures executives have the info they need for faster approvals.
A proactive talent pipeline means you already have qualified candidates before you market your open role. It uses candidate relationship management (CRM) to create evergreen talent pools, particularly for high-volume hiring.
Effective CRM includes recruitment strategies like:
If you’re new to CRM, most advanced TA software comes with features such as automated communications to engage and source candidates, preventing you from having to start from scratch.
iCIMS Engage, for example, uses AI-matching tools to present top candidates from the outset, reducing the time recruiters spend on sourcing and evaluation.
Manual data entry and reminder emails unnecessarily stretch out time to fill. Free up your team to focus on strategy and candidate experience by automating administrative tasks with modern recruiting software.
The right TA platform automatically:
Take the pharmaceutical company, Isagenix, for example. It cut time to fill by 50% using iCIMS to manage repetitive tasks like background screening. This shows that recruitment technology is essential for streamlining processes and reducing team workloads.
Pro tip: Integrate your TA platform with HR software for even more efficiency. This automates functions like sending job requisitions when backfills are needed or streamlining onboarding after offer acceptance.
Time to hire measures the period between a candidate’s application and job acceptance. While time to fill covers the entire recruitment process, time to hire focuses on the portion related to candidate engagement.
Time to hire reveals your candidate experience effectiveness and recruitment team efficiency. A shorter time to hire often indicates greater recruitment agility, like quick candidate responses that reduce dropout rates.
A longer time to hire might point to tedious or complicated candidate steps, like lengthy application processes.
Did you know? Company size affects time to hire. Smaller companies typically have shorter times than larger ones because big companies hire constantly, involve more recruitment steps, and have recruiters juggling multiple open positions.
If you’re an enterprise, look for TA technology that identifies process blockers to match small business efficiency.
Count the calendar days between when a candidate applies and when they accept your offer. You can also use a spreadsheet by subtracting the application date from the offer acceptance date.
Example: A candidate applies on August 11 and gets hired on August 30. Your time to hire is 19 days. The global average time to hire is 44 days. If yours is longer, set realistic goals to shorten it. Choose one or two process areas to tweak, such as application requirements, and measure success over time. Continue to adjust as needed. You’re more likely to see continued improvement when you start small and gradually scale up.
iCIMS automatically tracks time to hire across roles and departments, letting you make consistent, targeted improvements. Sign up for a free trial demo to see the formulas in action.
You can shorten time to hire through consistent candidate communication, positive interview experiences, and quick decision-making.
All candidates want to feel their time matters, even if they don’t get the job. They have their own lives, so maintain frequent, personable communication where they like to connect.
To do this, expand your communication beyond email.
Sending SMS texts or direct messages through social media, such as LinkedIn, allows you to stay in touch with candidates on their preferred platforms. It also increases the likelihood they’ll respond to critical messages like interview reminders and status changes.
You’ll also want to invest in recruitment marketing strategies and tech to boost candidate communication.
For example, iCIMS Employer Branding uses AI-powered chatbots to engage and suggest job openings to prospects on your career site. Along with detailed analytics dashboards, you can monitor the success of your communication efforts and your recruitment team in one place.
A complicated interview process is one of the biggest offenders in extending time to hire. But, structured hiring techniques and the right tech make interview logistics candidate-focused rather than a headache.
Instead of scrambling to align on evaluation criteria and interview attendees, structured hiring encourages deciding on this information during your kickoff meeting, before you advertise the role. This includes questions, question order, interview rounds, and ideal candidate qualities.
But even if you do wait, advanced recruitment systems streamline interviews by:
Decision-stage bottlenecks happen when recruitment stakeholders feel overwhelmed choosing the right candidates or get caught up in daily responsibilities.
Prevent this by reminding stakeholders to focus on your structured interview criteria. Which candidate satisfied the most conditions tied to your company’s goals?
Your ATS can also spur faster decisions with features like nudges and auto-reminders for submitting interview feedback and hiring recommendations.
Other options include setting internal goals or KPIs for stakeholders. A hiring manager is more likely to provide timely decisions if a performance KPI requires candidate decisions within 24 hours of interviews.
Apply these stakeholder KPIs during the offer stage when negotiating total rewards packages using your kickoff meeting plans. Your first choice is more likely to accept an offer when you respond quickly, ultimately shortening time to hire.
Time to fill and time to hire are recruitment staples because they help TA leadership estimate how quickly they can fill vital roles within current budgets.
Because of this, you can use these metrics to generate buy-in from executive teams who value data-backed insights for recruitment improvements.
Quick requisition approvals but slow time to hire? Show the c-suite how investing in tools to reduce recruiter administrative tasks and increase candidate engagement can speed things up.
Have years of time to fill data at your fingertips? Provide more accurate time-to-fill predictions for key roles and forecast costs per hire for better budgeting.
Pro tip: Compare time to fill and time to hire with other HR metrics for even more granular insights, like backfilling efficiency and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) progress across different candidate demographics.
For example, say your time to fill is short but the quality of hire isn’t where you expect after a year. This could mean you need more time assessing candidates for role fit before hiring. Look at time to fill alongside other metrics like source of hire, new hire turnover, and candidate satisfaction scores for even more insights.
Time to fill and time to hire are great starting points for understanding hiring speed and candidate engagement. But, you can’t look at these metrics in isolation; you need to track all key recruitment metrics to truly streamline your workflows.
Look to advanced software tools to calculate, segment, and monitor key recruitment metrics. With them, you can:
If your current system doesn’t deliver on the above, it’s time for a change. Discover how iCIMS Hire transforms your team into strategic recruiters.
Alex is well-versed in content and digital marketing. He blends a passion for sharp, persuasive copy with creating intuitive user experiences on the web. A natural storyteller, Alex highlights customer successes and amplifies their best practices.
Alex earned his bachelor’s degree at Fairleigh Dickinson University before pursuing his master’s at Montclair State University. When not at work, Alex enjoys hiking, studying history and homebrewing beer.
