Time to Hire
Also known as TTH
Time to hire measures the days between a candidate entering your pipeline and accepting an offer. It is a candidate-experience and process-efficiency metric, and it is distinct from time to fill, which starts when the role is approved rather than when the candidate applies.
Formula
Time to Hire = Offer acceptance date − Date the candidate entered the pipeline (applied or was sourced)Report the median rather than the mean. A single 200-day requisition will drag an average badly and hide an otherwise healthy process.
Worked example
- Scenario
- Five hires with time-to-hire of 18, 22, 25, 31 and 96 days.
- Calculation
- Median of the five values; mean would be 38.4
- Result
- Median 25 days — a far more honest description of the process than the 38-day mean
What good looks like
Median time to hire of roughly 3–4 weeks is competitive for most professional roles. Engineering and specialist positions commonly run 5–8 weeks. Beyond about 6 weeks for a general role, offer decline rates rise noticeably as candidates accept elsewhere.
Why time to hire matters
Speed is a competitive weapon in hiring. The strongest candidates are typically in multiple processes, and the organisation that reaches offer first often wins by default rather than by being the better employer. Every extra week also costs money in vacancy terms, which makes this metric one of the few that recruiting and finance both care about.
How to improve it
- 1Instrument each stage separately. Total time is not actionable; stage time is, and delay almost always concentrates in one or two stages.
- 2Look at interview scheduling gaps specifically — waiting for panel availability is usually the largest single source of delay.
- 3Reduce the number of interview stages rather than trying to run the same number faster.
- 4Set a decision SLA after final interview. Post-interview deliberation is where offers are lost.
- 5Track time to hire against offer acceptance rate to find the point where speed starts costing you candidates.
Common mistakes
- Confusing time to hire with time to fill, which measures a longer and different window.
- Reporting the mean, which outlier requisitions distort.
- Optimising the total without instrumenting stages, which just applies pressure everywhere.
- Measuring to offer extension rather than offer acceptance, which hides negotiation delay.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between time to hire and time to fill?
Time to hire starts when a candidate enters the pipeline and ends at offer acceptance — it measures your process efficiency. Time to fill starts when the requisition is approved and ends when the hire starts, so it also includes sourcing time and notice periods. Time to hire is the one recruiters control most directly.
What is a good time to hire?
A median of three to four weeks is competitive for most professional roles, with specialist and engineering positions commonly running five to eight weeks. Watch offer acceptance as you compress it — beyond a point, speed gains come from cutting assessment that was actually protecting hire quality.
Related metrics
Time to fill measures the days from requisition approval to the new hire's start date. Because it includes sourcing, selection, offer and notice period, it is the metric that hiring managers and workforce planners care about — it describes how long the work goes uncovered.
Offer Acceptance RateOffer acceptance rate is the percentage of extended offers that candidates accept. It is the clearest single indicator of how your compensation, employer brand and candidate experience compare against the alternatives your finalists are considering.
Candidate Drop-off RateCandidate drop-off rate is the percentage of candidates who withdraw from the hiring process before reaching a decision, measured overall and at each stage. It is the most direct quantitative measure of candidate experience available.
Cost per HireCost per hire is the total internal and external recruiting spend divided by the number of hires in a period. It is the standard efficiency measure for talent acquisition and the basis for comparing sourcing channels against each other.
Interview to Offer RatioInterview to offer ratio is the number of candidates interviewed for each offer extended. It measures selection efficiency — how well earlier stages are filtering — and it directly determines how much interviewer time each hire consumes.
Go deeper
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