Time to Hire: Everything You Should Know

The acquisition and onboarding of new talent are critical to organizational success. A common metric for gauging the efficiency of this process is "time to hire." 

In this guide, we shall examine time to hire, a significant metric in the recruitment process. We will explain its meaning, the average across companies, differences with time to fill, and why companies must track it. We shall also provide an easy formula for calculating the time to hire and share some practical advice on how you can make your recruiting faster and better.

To truly understand the significance of time to hire, let's explore its definition.

What is Time to Hire?

Time to hire is an HR metric that measures the number of days a candidate finishes their application form by applying for job ads or being sourced by a recruiter until they accept an offer. As a defined metric about time, hiring efficiency or effectiveness in an HR recruiting team is evident by this one metric.

If the two points on this hiring timeline are far apart, it may show that the hiring process could be more efficient. However, with proactive time to hire metrics tracking, HR managers can pinpoint trouble spots in the hiring funnel and take action to remove those hurdles, improving departmental productivity.

On the contrary, a fast-time to hire company is likely experienced and knows how to prepare efficiently for each phase of its hiring process. This reduces the cycle time to filter and onboard qualified candidates.

Also Read: How to Attract and Retain Gen Z Talent: An Ultimate Guide

Average Time to Hire

According to Pinpoint, the average time to hire across all sectors in 2023 was 31 days. Meanwhile, according to The Josh Bersin Company, the average time to hire has increased to 44 days.

This number is not fixed and can vary depending on factors like industry, job specifics, company size, or economic state. For instance, sectors like Energy & Defense may take more than 67 days to hire a candidate since the roles are specialized and candidates should be suitable. This difference emphasizes the need to know industry benchmarks when analyzing your time to hire scores.

Although the best time to hire is different for every industry and size of the company, an employer can earn a competitive advantage by reducing their average hiring timeline. In today's increasingly competitive market, candidates frequently have options among multiple opportunities; a lengthy hiring process can give another employer time to snatch up that best talent.

As you work to reduce your time to hire, it's also important to remember that speed and thoroughness usually go hand-in-hand. Doing it in a rush leads to mis-hires that can be very expensive and demoralize the team. The solution lies in improving your recruitment process for scalability while maintaining high-quality candidate experiences.

Also Read: How to Hire Remote Employees for Singapore Company

Time to Hire vs Time to Fill

Another important Key Performance Indicator (KPI) in the recruitment process is time to fill. While time to hire and time to fill are key hiring process performance measures, they focus on different aspects. The time to hire metric begins when the candidate applies and ends with candidate acceptance. In contrast, time to fill covers the end-to-end recruitment cycle, from job requisition creation until a candidate is hired.

Reduced time to hire means a better candidate experience, signaling that the company can move quickly. It could also save costs by simplifying the ends of lines. At the same time, monitoring time to fill helps companies track bottlenecks and inefficiency in recruiting as a whole.

Tracking those two metrics will provide a complete picture of what your organization is hiring. This increases recruitment efficiency, leading to faster hiring, improved candidate experience, and a robust workforce.

Also Read: Cost per Hire: Its Importance to Business & How to Calculate It

The Importance of Measuring Time to Hire

The question that may come to your mind is: why should we care about measuring time to hire?

Most hiring processes have potential optimizations. By measuring time to hire metric, the weak areas of the recruitment process are exposed and can be improved. This should be done since the long duration of the recruiting cycle can cause talented people to quietly back out, while a long procedure may discourage another person from even starting.

Time to hire data goes beyond retaining candidates by revealing elements that require improvement in your hiring strategies. By observing time to hire, one gets crucial information on how candidates perceive their experience and can optimize these approaches towards better efficiency and respect.

How to Calculate Time to Hire

Determining your time to hire is straightforward. The formula is as follows:

Time to Hire=Day Candidate Accept Job Offer-Day of Candidate's First Apply

It calculates the total days from a candidate's initial interaction with your company to their acceptance of the job offer, clearly showing how long your hiring process takes.

To illustrate, let's consider two candidates. Candidate A applied on April 1st and accepted the offer on April 25th, resulting in a time to hire of 24 days (25 - 1 = 24).

For Candidate B, who first applied on May 10th and accepted the offer on May 31st, the time to hire is 21 days (31 - 10 = 21). These examples demonstrate the formula's practical application, giving you a measurable understanding of your hiring speed. 

Also Read: What is Talent Mapping: Meaning, Advantages, and Step by Step

How to Improve Time to Hire

The necessity to hire quickly has never been more important in today's competitive talent market. To help fight the good war and get your hands on top candidates first, here are some proven methods for speeding up that hiring process without sacrificing quality:

1. Develop a consistent hiring process: Have an outlined road map for your recruiting, which includes every step of planning, attracting, evaluating, and extending offers. This guarantees a seamless and quick process to reduce delays or confusion.
2. Develop performance metrics: Monitor critical recruiting KPIs, such as time to hire, time to interview and offer acceptance. By measuring these KPIs, you can easily identify the bottlenecks and inefficiencies in your hiring process and take necessary action to improvise efficiency.
3. Create (and update) a talent database with leads: Track all applicants, referral names, and any candidate you may have met or sourced from other means for future reference. As a result, you can efficiently build upon an existing expert pool of talents for new roles since these available experts are pre-qualified candidates with whom your team has previously collaborated.
4. Improve your career page: Ensure your careers page is engaging, informative, and easy to navigate. Show off your company culture, benefits, and open jobs to help prospective candidates discover and apply for positions within your organization.
5. Write persuasive job listings: Write clear, to-the-point, and compelling job descriptions that accurately describe the responsibilities and requirements for each position. Put the benefits that drive them to be willing to work at your organization and the growth opportunities associated with that role.
6. Invest in an Applicant Tracking System (ATS): An ATS can automate and streamline your hiring process. It can streamline job postings, applicant tracking, interview scheduling, and reporting to save time on admin.
7. Simplify the interviews: Reduce interview time by using pre-screening tools, having video-call meetings instead of in person, and helpful scheduling between all relevant parties.
8. Facilitate communication with candidates: Stay in open communication throughout the hiring process. Update them in a timely manner, be quick with their questions, and keep it personable.

At the end of the day your time to hire is one of most important metrics when measuring how well you can attract and close top-talent. By learning the hiring process, watching how it changes and making any necessary adjustments you can drastically improve your recruitment. This faster time to hire results in a better candidate experience, cost savings and competitiveness when it comes to hiring the best talent.

Stop the long and painful hiring process that is holding you back. Talentport is here to enhance your talent acquisition process. With over 1 million verified freelancers in Southeast Asia, we offer cost-effective solutions for building your remote team. Discover how our platform can help you find top talent, reduce time to hire, and stay ahead of the competition.