Time to Hire: Why You Should Replace it in 2020

Table of Contents

• What is time to hire?
• Time to hire vs. Time to fill
• How to calculate time to hire
• Where time to hire falls short
• Hiring velocity
• Time to hire vs. Hiring velocity
• Update your recruiting metrics for 2020

What is time to hire?

Time to hire is the amount of time between when a candidate is sourced or applies to your job posting, and when the candidate accepts the job offer.

In today's modern workforce decisions are increasingly backed by data, permitting companies and hiring managers to be confident in the efficacy of their hiring decisions. Recruiting metrics like time to hire provide actionable insights for companies to see where they can improve and optimize their recruitment process for greater hiring success.

With a metric like time to hire you can identify bottlenecks in your hiring process and how fast your recruitment team moves when they’ve identified a top talent candidate.

Time to hire vs. Time to fill

It might seem as if these are the same metric, but there are key differences that can provide further insight into your hiring process. Time to hire refers to the total amount of time between when a candidate applies until when they accept a job offer. Time to fill tracks the total amount of time a position at your company remains unfilled.

It's important to note that time to fill is often measured differently. Time to fill varies on when the HR managers begin measuring the time period. At some companies this starts when a job is submitted for approval, when the job is approved, or when the job begins to be advertised.

How to calculate time to hire

You wont need an advanced mathematics degree to measure time to hire, the formula is simple. There are two variables you need to track in order to calculate time to hire.

• Simply put: Time to hire = day candidate accepted offer - Day candidate entered pipeline
• For example: You post a job, this is considered day 1. A candidate applied on the 9th. The candidate is hired on the 22nd. Your time to hire is 22-9=13
• Calculating average time to hire is also simple. If you recently hired for 4 roles and the time to hire for those positions was 22,10,24, and 40 days. The equation is (22+10+24+40)/4=24 days.

Where time to hire falls short

Time to hire can be a great and simple metric to give you a general sense of how your hiring process is going. Unfortunately, time to hire is too often referenced as the be-all end-all, with companies failing to connect hiring speed to overall company business growth benchmarks and different recruiting requirements for unique positions.

Hiring Velocity

Hiring velocity is increasingly becoming the standard to replace time to hire. Hiring velocity measures one thing: The percentage of jobs filled on time. Hiring velocity answers questions that are prevalent at every growth organization: are we able to hire the right people when we need them?

Time to hire vs. Hiring velocity

Time to hire is an easily trackable metric. Its downfall is in how it only incentivizes recruiting teams to hire quickly, and does not take into consideration that resources, such as time, will vary widely depending on the role in question. This can often lead to teams scrambling to hire, leading to lower quality candidates getting offers. Hiring velocity allows you to get actionable insights on various roles throughout your company. With these metrics, it will allow you to allot the proper time required to fill roles with qualified candidates.

Hiring velocity also allows you to analyze whether your company has the proper processes and resources in place to hire effectively. If your company's hiring velocity is hovering around 50%, it's clear that you need to reevaluate and revamp your recruitment processes.

Update your recruiting metrics for 2020

It's important to track and measure recruiting metrics within your company so that you can rework and upgrade your recruiting metrics to the current industry standards. Recruiting metrics are not to be taken lightly. If measured correctly they can save your company quite a significant amount of money. If your recruitment metrics are based on outdated standards you can expect to see a lower ROI for your new hires. If you are interested in checking out the latest metrics in recruiting, check out SmartRecruiters recruiting metrics page here!