Time to Hire

Time to hire is a human resources and recruiting term that refers to the amount of time that passes between the company’s initial contact with a candidate and the candidate’s acceptance of an employment offer. 

If a company experiences significant lag times between the initial contact and offer acceptance, it can indicate that improvements are needed in the hiring process. Carefully monitoring the time-to-hire metric will help identify inefficiencies. Then, teams can implement needed measures to boost productivity and eliminate hiring barriers. 

In some organizations, time to hire refers to the time that elapses between when a job is posted and a candidate has accepted an offer. 

Example: 

For an example, it helps to examine the difference between the time-to-hire and time-to-fill metrics. The time-to-fill process begins as soon as a company’s HR or finance department approves the job (this is Day 1 of the time-to-fill process). Alternatively, the time-to-hire process begins with the first contact between the company and a qualified applicant (this is Day 1 of the time-to-hire process) and ends when the candidate accepts an offer of employment.