What Is Time to Hire?
Time to hire measures how long it takes to fill a vacancy from the moment a role is approved to the date a candidate accepts an offer. Reducing it saves money and maintains operational momentum.
Key Takeaways
- Time to hire is the number of days from role approval to offer acceptance.
- Slow hiring costs money through lost productivity, overtime, and candidate drop-off.
- Breaking time to hire into stages reveals exactly where delays occur.
- A structured hiring process with clear ownership significantly reduces time to hire.
What time to hire measures
Time to hire is the number of calendar days between the point a vacancy is approved (or opened) and the date a candidate accepts the offer. It is one of the most practical operational HR metrics for SMEs because slow hiring has direct, tangible costs: the role is not being done (or existing staff are covering it at overtime rates), good candidates accept other offers while your process drags on, and managers lose momentum on strategic priorities while distracted by the hiring process. For most roles, a time to hire of 20–35 days is a realistic target; highly specialist or senior roles may take longer.
The stages of time to hire
Measuring time to hire by stage reveals exactly where delays accumulate. Common stages are: role approval to job posting (internal bureaucracy); job posting to first applications (sourcing effectiveness); application to first interview (screening speed); first interview to offer (decision-making speed and number of interview rounds); and offer to acceptance (negotiation and notice period). Most SMEs find that internal stages — role approval, scheduling interviews, and reaching a hiring decision — account for more delay than the market does. Mapping these stages and setting target timelines for each creates accountability and surfaces the real bottlenecks.
The cost of slow hiring
Every day a vacancy sits open has a cost. For a revenue-generating role, it is lost revenue or lost capacity. For a support role, it is extra cost as existing staff cover or as temp/contractor resource is used. A simple way to estimate the daily cost: divide the fully-loaded annual salary of the role by 250 working days. For a £40,000 role with employer costs taking the total to £50,000, the daily cost of vacancy is £200. At a 40-day average time to hire, that is £8,000 per hire — purely in vacancy cost, before factoring in recruiter fees or management time. This calculation often motivates leadership to prioritise and resource the hiring process more effectively.
Reducing time to hire
Practical approaches for SMEs include: keeping job descriptions up to date so posting is not delayed when a vacancy arises; building a pipeline of candidates before vacancies occur (through networking, LinkedIn, and referrals); using structured scoring criteria so interview panel decisions are faster and more consistent; reducing interview rounds to the minimum necessary for a confident decision; and ensuring hiring managers clear diary time for interviews promptly. For recurring roles, a standard hiring template — job ad, interview questions, scoring sheet, reference check framework — eliminates reinvention each time and typically cuts 5–10 days from the process.