Time to Fill vs Time to Hire: What’s the Difference, Formula & Efficiency Tips (2025)
Here’s the difference between time to fill vs time to hire in one sentence: Time to fill measures your organization’s hiring efficiency from job requisition to offer acceptance, while time to hire focuses on how quickly you move a candidate from application to offer acceptance.
In 2024, the average time to hire globally hovered around 44 days, climbing even higher in technical roles where hiring can exceed 60 days. Meanwhile, time to fill averaged about 54 days, according to recent SHRM benchmarks. These lengthy timelines are far from trivial. When vacancies drag on, productivity suffers and candidate interest cools.
That’s where HeartCount comes in. This people-first SaaS platform is built for HR leaders, managers, and executives to help teams reduce friction, surface real-time sentiment, and bring hiring efficiencies to life through continuous feedback loops and actionable insights.
In this post, you’ll learn:
- How these two key metrics differ and why both matter
- Step-by-step formulas and benchmarks you can start measuring today
- Strategies to improve both time to fill and time to hire, with a focus on seamlessly threading in HeartCount’s pulse survey and real-time analytics tools
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1.Time to Fill vs Time to Hire: Quick Comparison
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2.What Is Time to Fill?
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3.What Is Time to Hire?
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4.When to Use Each Metric (and When to Use Both)
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5.10 Ways to Reduce Time to Fill and Time to Hire
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6.Related Metrics to Track Alongside Time to Fill and Time to Hire
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7.The HeartCount Advantage: From Delays to Insights
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8.FAQs About Time to Fill and Time to Hire
Here’s the difference between time to fill vs time to hire in one sentence: Time to fill measures your organization’s hiring efficiency from job requisition to offer acceptance, while time to hire focuses on how quickly you move a candidate from application to offer acceptance.
In 2024, the average time to hire globally hovered around 44 days, climbing even higher in technical roles where hiring can exceed 60 days. Meanwhile, time to fill averaged about 54 days, according to recent SHRM benchmarks. These lengthy timelines are far from trivial. When vacancies drag on, productivity suffers and candidate interest cools.
That’s where HeartCount comes in. This people-first SaaS platform is built for HR leaders, managers, and executives to help teams reduce friction, surface real-time sentiment, and bring hiring efficiencies to life through continuous feedback loops and actionable insights.
In this post, you’ll learn:
- How these two key metrics differ and why both matter
- Step-by-step formulas and benchmarks you can start measuring today
- Strategies to improve both time to fill and time to hire, with a focus on seamlessly threading in HeartCount’s pulse survey and real-time analytics tools
Time to Fill vs Time to Hire: Quick Comparison
Side-by-Side Table: Definitions, Formulas, Benchmarks
To truly optimize your recruitment process, you need clarity around what each metric captures. While both are time-based indicators, time to fill and time to hire reflect different stages of the funnel and serve distinct decision-making purposes.
| Metric | Definition | Start Point | End Point | What It Measures | Benchmark (2024) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time to Fill | Days between job requisition approval and offer acceptance | When job is approved or posted | When candidate accepts the offer | Hiring process efficiency | ~54 days |
| Time to Hire | Days between candidate entering the pipeline and offer acceptance | When candidate applies or is sourced | When candidate accepts the offer | Candidate experience and recruitment speed | ~44 days |
This distinction matters because optimising for one does not always improve the other. A long requisition approval process can extend time to fill even if the hiring team moves quickly after sourcing. Looking at the time to fill vs time to hire formula side by side helps clarify whether delays come from organisational approvals or from candidate pipeline stages.
What’s the Real Difference Between These Metrics?
The key difference lies in who controls the timeline.
- Time to fill reflects the organisation’s internal processes: job approvals, role scoping, recruiter bandwidth, and collaboration across HR and departments.
- Time to hire reflects how candidates experience your process once they’re identified: from first contact or application through to offer acceptance.
In short, time to fill is a planning and resource metric. It tells you how fast your team can go from open role to closed role. Time to hire is an execution metric. It tells you how effectively you move candidates through your funnel once they are in play. Looking at these side by side provides one of the clearest recruitment metrics examples of how efficiency and experience intersect in the hiring process.
For a closer look at the employee-side impact, you can explore how hiring timelines intersect with employee sentiment, especially in competitive or high-stakes roles.
Time to Hire vs Time to Fill: Which Should You Prioritize?
The answer depends on your role and goals.
- Talent acquisition leaders often track time to fill to forecast team capacity and resource planning
- People ops and hiring managers look at time to hire to reduce delays, improve candidate experience, and prevent top applicants from dropping off
That said, these metrics work best in tandem. Used together, they reveal bottlenecks both before and after a candidate enters your pipeline. For example, if your time to hire is strong but time to fill is high, the delay is likely happening before sourcing. If the reverse is true, your pipeline or interview process may need attention. Organisations that rely only on time to fill often miss candidate-side bottlenecks, but by pairing this metric with time to hire and enriching the process with custom employee surveys, HR teams can surface feedback in real time and refine where delays are actually happening.
What Is Time to Fill?
Definition + Purpose
Time to fill measures the total number of days between when a job requisition is approved or posted and when a candidate accepts the offer. It is an organisational efficiency metric that reflects how quickly your company can move from identifying a hiring need to closing the role.
Because it covers everything from approvals to sourcing to offer acceptance, time to fill is often used by HR leaders to evaluate how effectively their recruitment engine runs. It also reveals the impact of internal processes, such as alignment with hiring managers and speed of approvals. To get a clearer view of these dynamics, many organisations integrate employee overviews into their dashboards to connect recruitment data with broader workforce planning.
Time to Fill Formula + Examples
The standard calculation for time to fill is straightforward:
Formula:
Time to Fill = Date candidate accepts offer – Date job requisition was approved or opened
Example:
If a requisition was opened on 1 March and the candidate accepted the offer on 25 March, the time to fill is 24 days.
Tracking this across departments or regions helps reveal whether delays are structural (like long approval cycles) or situational (like niche roles with smaller talent pools).
Why Time to Fill Matters for Recruitment Efficiency
Time to fill reflects the true speed of your recruitment operations. Long cycles can lead to unfilled roles, increased workload for current employees, and even higher turnover risk. According to SHRM, the average time to fill sits at around 54 days, though this varies widely by industry.
A consistently high time to fill often signals internal inefficiencies, such as unclear job requirements or slow sign offs. Addressing these issues shortens hiring cycles and stabilizes teams by reducing workload spikes that can erode morale and push attrition higher. For practical tactics that protect retention while you optimize time to fill, see this guide on how to reduce employee turnover.
COLLECT
What Is Time to Hire?
Definition + Purpose
Time to hire measures the number of days between when a candidate enters your pipeline (by applying or being sourced) and when they accept your offer. Unlike time to fill, which is focused on organisational efficiency, time to hire zooms in on the candidate’s experience and the effectiveness of your recruitment funnel.
It is a critical metric for recruiters and hiring managers because it shows how smoothly candidates move through each stage, application, screening, interviews, and final decision. Delays at any point can create a poor candidate experience and increase the risk of losing top talent. Monitoring employee sentiment during hiring cycles and adding custom employee surveys can help identify friction points that affect both new hires and the teams waiting for reinforcements.
Time to Hire Formula + Examples
The calculation is similar to time to fill, but the starting point is different:
Formula:
Time to Hire = Date candidate accepts offer – Date candidate entered the pipeline
Example:
If a candidate applied on 5 April and accepted the offer on 30 April, the time to hire is 25 days.
HR teams often calculate time to hire by role type or department. This makes it easier to see where bottlenecks occur, for instance, technical roles may have longer interview loops than customer support or sales positions. To improve accuracy, many organisations supplement raw metrics with insights from a structured pulse survey guide that captures candidate and manager feedback in real time.
Why Time to Hire Matters for Candidate Experience
Time to hire directly affects how candidates perceive your organisation. A fast, transparent process shows respect for their time and helps you compete for talent in crowded markets. A slow process, on the other hand, can frustrate applicants, increase drop-off rates, and damage your employer brand.
Improving time to hire is not just about speed, but also about quality of interaction. Streamlining interviews, providing timely feedback, and keeping communication clear are all ways to enhance candidate experience. When combined with continuous feedback loops, these efforts create a recruitment process that feels engaging rather than exhausting, a key factor for attracting and retaining the best talent.
When to Use Each Metric (and When to Use Both)
Choosing whether to focus on time to fill or time to hire is not always straightforward. Each metric highlights a different stage of the recruitment process, and depending on your goals, one may feel more pressing than the other. In reality, the most effective recruiting strategies track both, since together they provide a complete picture of organisational efficiency and candidate experience.
Use Cases for CHROs, HR Managers, and Line Leads
The value of tracking time to fill and time to hire often depends on your role and objectives.
- CHROs and senior talent leaders rely on time to fill to assess workforce planning, forecast recruitment capacity, and set strategic benchmarks across multiple departments or regions. It is a lens on organisational agility.
- HR managers and recruiters pay closer attention to time to hire, since it highlights how smoothly candidates move through the funnel once sourced. This helps them identify friction points, such as slow interview feedback or scheduling bottlenecks.
- Line managers use both metrics in context. While they may not track KPIs directly, they feel the operational pain of long time to fill cycles when roles remain unstaffed. At the same time, they want fast-moving candidate processes to avoid losing talent in competitive fields.
In practice, each persona benefits from a slightly different view. What unites them is the need for visibility into where time is lost and how it impacts both productivity and candidate experience.
Why Both Metrics Belong in Your Recruiting Dashboard
Focusing on just one metric provides an incomplete picture. Tracking time to fill alone shows how long roles remain open but does not capture how candidates perceive the process. Tracking time to hire alone highlights funnel speed but misses the bigger organisational context.
When monitored together, these metrics create a diagnostic pairing. They reveal whether delays occur before candidates apply (approvals, job description clarity, recruiter bandwidth) or after candidates enter the pipeline (interviews, assessments, offer negotiations).
Adding both metrics to your recruiting dashboard helps HR teams diagnose issues more accurately and prioritise fixes that matter. It also creates a more balanced conversation between leadership, recruiters, and hiring managers. By layering in additional insights from tools like real-time dashboards and sentiment surveys, you gain a continuous view of hiring efficiency that supports both business outcomes and candidate satisfaction.
10 Ways to Reduce Time to Fill and Time to Hire
1. Standardize Your Hiring Process
Consistency is one of the fastest ways to reduce delays. Standard interview guides, evaluation rubrics, and approval flows help recruiters and managers make decisions quickly. A clear playbook also creates a better experience for candidates who see a structured and fair process.
2. Automate Repetitive Recruitment Tasks
Tasks like resume screening, scheduling interviews, and sending follow up messages consume valuable time. Automating these steps with applicant tracking systems or integrated HR software allows recruiters to focus on higher value activities such as candidate engagement and stakeholder alignment.
3. Use Pulse Feedback to Track Candidate Experience
Lengthy or unclear processes often cause candidates to drop out. Embedding short feedback check ins at key stages reveals where frustration builds. Insights from pulse surveys help HR teams refine the process in real time, making hiring both faster and more candidate friendly.
4. Build an Active Talent Pipeline
Waiting until a requisition is approved to start sourcing wastes precious days. Maintaining a warm pipeline of potential candidates, through talent communities, alumni networks, and proactive sourcing, shortens time to fill significantly.
5. Set Clear Job Requirements from Day One
Unclear or shifting role requirements are a major driver of hiring delays. Collaborating with hiring managers at the outset to define must have skills, nice to haves, and cultural fit criteria prevents confusion later. Well written job descriptions also attract more qualified candidates, reducing screening time.
6. Enable Hiring Manager Accountability with Data
Recruitment metrics are not just for HR. Sharing reports with hiring managers highlights where delays occur and encourages accountability. When managers see data on their average response times or interview scheduling speed, they are more likely to adjust their behaviour.
7. Optimize Job Posting Channels
Not all job boards and social platforms deliver the same quality of applicants. Analysing performance by channel allows you to double down on sources that yield faster, better matches. This reduces wasted time on irrelevant applicants and accelerates the hiring cycle.
8. Empower Referrals with Recognition
Employee referrals often lead to quicker hires because trust and cultural fit are already in place. Encouraging referrals, and recognising employees who contribute quality candidates, strengthens the talent pipeline. Platforms with built in recognition features, such as employee recognition tools, make it easier to track and reward contributions.
9. Use Real Time Dashboards to Catch Delays
Visibility is essential. Dashboards that display live metrics on open roles, pipeline progress, and average days per stage help recruiters spot problems before they grow. This allows for faster interventions and more proactive planning.
10. Collaborate Across HR and Team Leads in One Platform
Recruitment is a team sport. Using a single platform for HR, hiring managers, and team leads ensures that everyone has the same information at the same time. Collaboration tools cut down on email back and forth, shorten decision making cycles, and keep candidates engaged throughout the process.
UNDERSTAND
Related Metrics to Track Alongside Time to Fill and Time to Hire
Optimizing hiring speed is important, but focusing only on the difference between time to hire and time to fill leaves gaps in understanding. To get a full view of recruitment efficiency, it helps to track complementary indicators that reveal quality, candidate behaviour, and long term outcomes.
Offer Acceptance Rate
This metric shows the percentage of job offers that are accepted compared to the total extended. A low rate often signals issues with compensation, role expectations, or employer brand. Monitoring it alongside time to hire reveals whether speed is paired with competitiveness.
Candidate Drop Off Rate
Drop offs happen when candidates disengage before completing the process. Measuring this rate highlights stages where communication or timelines need improvement. A fast process means little if top candidates abandon it midway.
Hiring Funnel Conversion Rates
Tracking conversion rates at each stage, application to screening, screening to interview, interview to offer, helps diagnose where candidates leak out of the funnel. This metric pairs naturally with time to hire, showing not only how long the process takes but also how well it retains talent.
Employee Turnover Rate
Recruitment efficiency does not end when a candidate signs an offer. If new hires leave quickly, it raises questions about quality of hire and onboarding. Understanding turnover alongside time based metrics creates a clearer link between hiring speed and long term retention. For a deeper dive, see how employee turnover and retention connect to sustainable workforce planning.
Recruitment Metrics Example in Action
No metric lives in isolation. For example, a company that improves time to fill by streamlining approvals may also see its offer acceptance rate increase because candidates are contacted sooner. Likewise, reducing time to hire can decrease drop off rates and improve engagement. Analysing these links helps HR prove the ROI of recruiting efficiency improvements. If you are looking to strengthen your business case, explore how employee engagement ROI ties directly to hiring and retention outcomes.
The HeartCount Advantage: From Delays to Insights
Traditional metrics show how long hiring takes, but they rarely explain why. HeartCount adds context by combining recruitment data with real time signals from your workforce.
Real Time Signals: Sentiment Dips + Bottlenecks
Through pulse and custom surveys, teams can see how prolonged vacancies affect workload and morale. These signals highlight bottlenecks that raw time based metrics miss.
Predictive Alerts for Burnout or Attrition Risk
When hiring delays push extra work onto employees, disengagement can build. HeartCount uses AI insights and risk flags to warn managers early, so small issues do not escalate into turnover or employee attrition.
How HeartCount Helps You Listen → Diagnose → Act
By layering metric reporting with continuous feedback, HeartCount helps HR leaders connect hiring timelines to broader employee experience. With data driven insights and automated pulse checks, organisations can move beyond tracking delays to actively improving them.
ACT
FAQs About Time to Fill and Time to Hire
What’s the difference between time to hire and time to fill?
Time to fill measures the total number of days between opening a role and a candidate accepting the offer. Time to hire starts when a candidate enters the pipeline and ends at offer acceptance. The first reflects organisational efficiency, while the second reflects candidate experience.
Why are both metrics important?
Each metric highlights a different stage of the process. Time to fill shows how long a role stays vacant, which affects productivity and workforce planning. Time to hire shows how quickly candidates progress once engaged, which shapes employer brand and applicant satisfaction.
Which is better to track: time to fill or time to hire?
Neither works well in isolation. HR leaders use time to fill to forecast resources and capacity, while recruiters use time to hire to monitor funnel speed. Together they provide a balanced view of efficiency and experience.
How do these metrics impact employee experience?
Extended hiring cycles increase workload for existing employees, which can hurt morale and retention. Monitoring both metrics helps prevent those strains from building. Pairing them with regular sentiment checks ensures that hiring speed aligns with employee wellbeing.
What’s a good benchmark for time to fill in 2025?
According to SHRM and iCIMS benchmarks, the global average sits around 54 days, though it varies by industry and role complexity. Many organisations aim for 45 days or less as a competitive target.
How can software like HeartCount help improve these KPIs?
HeartCount complements time based metrics with pulse surveys, AI insights, and automated reporting. This helps HR teams see not just how long hiring takes, but also why delays happen and how they affect employees. By combining data driven insights with feedback loops, HR leaders can act faster and improve both recruitment efficiency and candidate experience.