Attracting and retaining your company’s best talent is essential to meeting business objectives, so recruitment is a natural focus for senior leaders, boards of directors and HR executives. Measuring different elements of the recruitment process helps organisations understand the strengths and weaknesses of their systems and provides data which can inform strategic thinking around recruitment decisions, ultimately supporting a more agile, high-quality workforce.
In this article, we help you understand what ‘time to hire’ measures are and why it’s worth using this metric. We also suggest how to reduce the time to hire and recruit the best talent for your business.
What is ‘Time to Hire’?
The expression ‘time to hire’ refers to the period between a company receiving a candidate’s application and the same candidate accepting the job offer.
Many companies measure this metric because a shorter time-to-hire period usually indicates an application process that is efficient and streamlined. Keeping the process moving along at an appropriate pace helps to keep the best candidates more engaged in the potential role and more likely to accept the position.
The lower the ‘time to hire’, the more efficient the process.
Delays in the hiring process can frustrate potential candidates and may encourage people to drop out, especially if a competitor is moving faster. They can also increase recruitment costs as more time is spent on one specific role than is necessary.
Average Time to Hire in the UK
Time to hire varies across industries and sectors. It can also differ regionally and according to the seniority and work arrangement of roles. More senior roles and those with more complex arrangements (such as remote or part-time) often take longer to fill.
In early 2025, TotalJobs reported that the average time to hire was 4.6 weeks (32 days). Government, public sector, banking and financial services often take longer than the average (up to six weeks), whereas hotels, catering and retail can be quicker (around four weeks). Entry-level roles can be filled within 3.5 weeks, with more senior roles having an average time to hire of six weeks and more.
Time to Hire vs. Time to Fill
Time to fill might sound like the same metric as time to hire, but the difference is meaningful when organisations review how they approach recruitment and talent development.
Whereas time to hire measures the period from a candidate putting in their application to accepting the offer, time to fill starts when the organisation identifies that it has a vacant position. Time to fill focuses on the beginning of the recruitment process and includes everything, such as establishing there is an open position, creating a job description and agreeing on the process for recruitment and getting sign-off.
Which Is The Most Important Metric: Time to Hire or Time to Fill?
Both ‘time to hire’ and ‘time to fill’ are meaningful metrics for organisations to use to understand how efficient their recruitment process is. However, as they provide a different insight into the process, which one is most important depends on your reasons for measuring in the first place.
Time To Fill
- Definition: the time between the position opening and the candidate accepting the offer.
- What it measures: how efficient the entire recruitment process is, including internal and external factors.
- Benefits: helps senior leaders understand how recruitment impacts workforce planning and productivity, and can illuminate the impact of delays in signing off on roles in terms of additional costs.
- Useful for: HR recruitment teams, senior leaders and operations teams
- Why use it: to reduce the time vacancies are open, track the effectiveness of all processes within recruitment
Time to Hire
- Definition: the time between a candidate applying for a role and accepting the offer
- What it measures: how efficient the selection, interview and decision-making stages of the recruitment process are
- Benefits: helps to assess the efficiency of decision-making, reducing the chance of losing the top candidates to other roles and ensuring that candidates start their roles feeling valued
- Useful for: talent acquisition and retention teams
- Why use it: to improve the candidate’s experience and acceptance rate, track the effectiveness of processes to advertise, select, interview and make a decision
To fully understand the effectiveness of your recruitment process, best practice suggests tracking both metrics alongside each other. For example, if you have an extended period for ‘time to fill’ but a relatively short ‘time to hire’, this can indicate a problem with deciding to recruit rather than an issue with getting the right candidate. A shorter ‘time to fill’ period with a longer ‘time to hire’ could illustrate issues with the candidates available, the systems used for assessment or the company’s reputation.
Common Factors that Affect Time to Hire
There are many factors that impact ‘time to hire’, including both internal and external reasons:
Internal Factors
Time to hire can be impacted by the following factors that are related to internal processes:
- Structure of the recruitment process: the number of interviews or assessments, plus issues such as scheduling or approvals, can increase time to hire
- Nature of the role: more senior or specialised positions can require more time to ensure that it is the right candidate
- Clarity of job description: poorly worded or vague job descriptions can attract a larger and less relevant field of candidates, again slowing down the process by increasing the time taken to select a candidate to interview
- Approvals process: delays in feedback or approvals from senior leaders can cause delays in the interview process and the negotiation stage (for example, salary approvals, background checks)
- Technology: applicant tracking systems (ATS) can help reduce time to hire by automating screening, scheduling and communication with candidates
External Factors
The following external factors can impact time to hire
- Market Conditions: in very competitive markets, a lengthy time to hire can mean candidates choose another company which has moved more quickly to secure the candidate
- Candidate pool: where the pool of candidates is more limited, for example, if a specific skill is required or the location of the role is less appealing, time to hire can be higher due to there being fewer candidates to choose from
- Reputation and brand: a company which is less well known or has a poor reputation as an employer may find their time to hire is longer than those with a strong brand and good reputation.
- Location: it can be harder to fill positions for companies located in rural or remote areas, due to the smaller number of people available
How to Improve Time to Hire
Improving your time to hire means reducing the steps you take to move from the candidate applying for the role to accepting a role. There are several ways you can do this:
Streamline the Hiring Process
Document the recruitment process from start to finish, detailing the steps each candidate has to take, who is involved internally and how long each stage should take. Identify any bottlenecks in the process, including whether training would support the individuals involved in the process.
Align the Hiring Criteria
Ensure that everyone involved in the process knows and agrees to the hiring criteria, including the job description, assessments, how competencies will be evaluated, the final decision process, and what can be negotiated with the candidate.
Focus on the Candidate Experience
Get feedback from successful recruits in the business to understand what helped them to be engaged and excited during their interview process, as well as any improvements they suggest. Create resources such as videos and written guides to share with candidates and showcase your company to help the applicant understand if it is the right place for them to work.
Create A Talent Pipeline
Keep track of applicants who were strong candidates but unsuccessful for previous roles, as this provides a group of pre-screened applicants you can contact for new roles. You can also expand the group you have by networking and reaching out to under-represented groups to ensure you have a diverse candidate pool.
Use Technology
Using an ATS allows you to automate as much of the process as possible, such as posting job adverts to multiple boards, screening applications, and scheduling interviews. Or for larger companies, a recruitment management system (RMS) can help you manage the relationship with the candidates. Integrating technology into your recruitment process frees up time to spend on the more strategic elements, such as getting the job description right and attracting the best candidates.
Factorial Tools to Reduce Your Average Time to Hire
A business management system, such as Factorial, can support how you measure time to hire and reduce it. Factorial’s ATS will help you track your time to hire metric because it automatically logs the dates on which specific actions happen and can provide you with data insights on the recruitment situation for different roles. This information makes it possible to compare, contrast and learn. The ATS can also help reduce hiring time by ensuring that responses are provided to candidates automatically, scheduling interviews and assessments works for all involved, and using a central database for all relevant information. Overall, Factorial simplifies your recruitment process with features such as:
- Integrated AI to filter through applications
- Centralised location of all communication between you and candidates
- Publish job posting on 250+ job boards
Reduce your time to hire and onboard the best candidates to join your team. Get your free trial of Factorial today!
