Time to Hire: How We Calculate & Improve This Recruiting KPI

Recruiters are often focused on finding the perfect candidate. And rightly so—a great hire can generate a lot of value for a company. However, it's also important to balance hire quality with the time it takes to find and hire.

Why? Because vacant positions are expensive.

On average, it takes 41 days to hire an employee. And the cost to your business for this delay can be significant—gross revenue per employee divided by total working days times 41 days. So, if your company's gross revenue per employee is $175,000, that's an average loss of over $27,500.

Time to hire (TtH) is a KPI that measures the length of time it takes to complete the hiring process from start to finish. It can also help you reduce this timeline and improve your overall recruitment process.

In this Willo article, we’ll introduce you to time to hire, how to calculate it, and tips for reducing it without sacrificing candidate quality.

What Is Time to Hire?

Time to hire (TtH) shows the total number of days from when a qualified candidate enters the recruitment pipeline to when they accept your job offer. Generally, it includes all calendar days, including weekends and holidays.

TtH is typically averaged across a recruitment cohort (e.g., “candidates hired in March”). Averaging allows you to get a high-level view of your overall hiring process. It also allows you to benchmark performance against industry standards or your own historical data.

However, looking into TtH for individual candidates can be useful for identifying cases with unusually long recruitment cycles to analyze.

How to Calculate Time to Hire

Time to hire is almost always calculated as an average across a specific cohort. So, to calculate it, you first need to work out the TtH for each individual candidate in that cohort. 

Let’s calculate TtH for “Candidate A” as an example:

• Application received: June 1
• Job offer accepted: June 15

The calculation is pretty simple—it’s the difference between the two dates: 

• TtH = 15 - 1 = 14 days

But say we want to calculate TtH for all three candidates hired in the last month (A, B, and C) to see whether there are any trends or patterns. We’re really interested in calculating average TtH.  To do this, we need to first work out the individual metrics and then average them:

• Average TtH =  Total TtH / Number of Hires

For instance, if you have:

• Candidate A: 14 days
• Candidate B: 15 days
• Candidate C: 15 days

Your total TtH would be: 

• 14 + 15 + 15 = 44 days

Then, your average TtH would be:

• 44 days / 3 hires = 14.67 days

Time to Hire Benchmarks

Generally, a good average time to hire is between 25 to 30 days.

However, TtH can vary based on industry and the roles you’re filling. Specialized or technical positions might take longer to fill because of a smaller pool of qualified candidates. So, let’s look at some benchmarks for specific industries:

Industry

Average Time to Hire (Days)

Energy & Defense

67+

Professional Services

47

Investment Banking

21-60

Consumer Banking

43-45

Tech & Media

~20

Source: The Josh Bersin Company

Why Is Calculating Time to Hire Important? 

Better Candidate Experience

Top talent won't wait forever for a job offer. In fact, 60% of candidates will abandon an application process if they feel it’s too slow or complex. Tracking your time to hire would let you know when your recruitment process is stepping into slow territory so you can make the adjustments needed to keep top candidates engaged. 

Improved Overall Recruitment Processes

Time to hire is a top-line recruiting metric that can give you quick insights into the efficiency of your process. 

For example, if you notice that it takes an average of 40 days to hire developers despite an industry average of 25 days, there’s likely an issue with your process. Until you realize there’s an issue, it’s impossible to start working on solutions.

Reduced Costs

The logic here is simple—the longer a position remains vacant, the more it costs your company. 

Unfilled roles translate to lost productivity, potential delays in projects, and the need for overtime from existing staff. Tracking your time to hire can help you minimize these costs, and keep your budget in check.

According to Clearance Jobs, unfilled positions can cost a company up to $5,160 per week.

How to Reduce Time to Hire (5 Tips)

1. Modernize your interview process 

Traditional, synchronous interviews eat up a lot of time. 

To give you a sense for how big this issue is, one recent study found that 25% of businesses spend 10 hours every week scheduling interviews… or at least trying to. And this doesn’t even include time spent conducting interviews—often 2+ hours per candidate. All this leads to an inflated average TtH.

To address this, many recruiters are turning to automated scheduling tools. These are effective—59% of recruiters who use these tools say they’re saving between 2 and 10 hours per week. That’s time that can be spent on other important tasks to speed the process up.

However, adopting an async interview tool like Willo offers even greater reductions. Willo lets candidates record their responses to a set of questions on their own time (but within a designated time frame). This eliminates schedules from your interview process and allows you to screen candidates at scale. 

For example, consider a high-volume hiring scenario where you need to screen 100 candidates in a few weeks. Traditionally, that means scheduling and attending 100 separate live interviews—that’s a huge time sink. 

With the async format, you just create a set of interview questions, send them to all 100 candidates, and let them record when convenient. When the submissions roll in, you can also review them at your own pace. This significantly reduces the time needed to interview candidates.

MyTutor saw the potential of async interviews as a way to keep pace with expanding recruitment needs. They boosted their recruiting capacity by about 75% and cut interview time in half, thanks to Willo’s async interview tools.

Source: How MyTutor Increased Recruiting Capacity And Reduced Overheads

Want to learn more about the process of conducting async interviews? Check out our demo video.

2. Follow a structured recruitment plan 

Recruitment processes need to be adaptable. But the second they stop being processes, you’re going to run into issues with protracted hiring timelines and unhappy candidates. A structured plan keeps everyone on the same page and sets clear expectations for each stage.

We can’t give you a standard recruitment process without knowing your specific needs, but here’s a quick guide for structuring the process yourself:

• Map out the recruitment process with clear timelines: Outline each stage from job posting to offer, assigning realistic timeframes (e.g., one week for initial screening, two days for reference checks). Create a visual flowchart or Gantt chart to make this crystal clear. Set up automatic reminders in your ATS to keep everyone on track.
• Assign roles and responsibilities with accountability: For each stage, designate a primary owner and a backup. Create a RACI matrix to clarify who does what (and who needs to be kept in the loop). Schedule brief daily or weekly check-ins to ensure tasks are progressing as planned. 
• Implement a robust communication plan: Develop email templates for each stage of candidate communication. Set up an automated system to send updates to candidates at predefined intervals. Create an internal communication channel (e.g., Slack channel) dedicated to recruitment updates. Establish a policy for response times to candidate inquiries (e.g., within 24 hours).

3. Track time to complete specific sub-stages

Tracking your overall time to hire can show if your hiring process is slow, but it won't help you zero in on the source of delays. 

To do this, you need to segment time to hire into clearly defined stages, like:

• Time to review: Time from application to initial long- or short-listing decision
• Time to schedule: Time from application to a successfully scheduled interview
• Time to offer: Time from a successfully completed interview to an offer extended
• Time to accept: Time from offer extended to offer accepted

For example, let’s say you notice that over the past three months, your average TtH has increased by 30%. 

By looking into equivalent metrics for different substages, you find that most have stayed relatively stable while time to schedule has increased significantly. We’ve graphed some example data to help you visualize this point.

Sample data to show how segmentation can help pinpoint challenges and growth areas

This data helps you quickly zero in on problem areas with minimal guesswork.

4. Automate admin tasks  

Even the most enthusiastic recruiters can get bogged down by repetitive admin tasks. Tasks like data entry, data analysis, and writing candidate outreach messages might seem small, but they quickly add up and eat away at valuable time. Identifying these tasks and automating them can save a ton of time and speed up your hiring process.

How do you discover tasks to automate? 

• Track your activities: For a week, track how you spend your time during the recruitment process. Again, you can use a simple log or time-tracking integration here. Pay close attention to recurring tasks that involve data entry, analysis, or repetitive communication.
• Talk to your recruiters: Ask Recruiters to share the biggest time-consuming tasks they encounter during the hiring process. 
• Review your recruitment workflow: Map out the different stages of your recruitment process. For each stage, consider the tasks involved and identify any recurring administrative activities.

So, what are some interesting ways to streamline those tasks? 

First off, invest in recruitment software with built-in (or third-party) automation features, like Workable, Willo, and Greenhouse. These tools can help you handle tasks like scheduling interviews, sending automated emails, and even pre-screening candidates based on set criteria.

You can use AI to switch things here, too. AI-powered tools can help you sift through resumes and cover letters, find qualified candidates, and even come up with interview questions tailored to your needs. This lets your recruiters focus on the more strategic parts of hiring, like evaluating top contenders and conducting in-depth interviews.

5. Outsource background checks

Background checks have a lot of moving parts—contacting references, verifying job history, and running criminal checks. Traditionally, this process can take anywhere from two to five days, or even longer depending on what you need to verify.

Outsourcing this task can save your recruiters a ton of time, letting them focus on other important tasks while the background check runs in the background.

At Willo, we can help in this area, too. When you set up your interview on Willo, you can include a background check question. So, as candidates submit their responses and you review them, you’ll also get a report verifying details and right to work.

Build a Quicker, More Effective Recruitment Process

To achieve a truly efficient recruitment funnel, keep tabs on your time to hire. This helps you prevent your recruitment process from dragging on for too long, leading to a better experience for candidates, cost savings, and happier employees.

One great way to speed things up is using async interviews. It helps you streamline your screening process and accelerate your hiring cycle. For the best async interview tool, check out Willo. With features like interview scorecards and collaboration tools, Willo makes hiring faster, easier, and more efficient. 

Try Willo with a free trial and see the difference for yourself.

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