What Is the Time-to-Hire Metric? [+Why It Matters in Recruitment]

One of the most important recruitment metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) is the time-to-hire metric. 

A positive or short time-to-hire indicates a speedy recruitment process. That said, this metric may vary by industry, field, or role. For example, some roles, like senior or managerial roles, may require a longer time-to-hire. 

However, the longer it takes for you or your team to hire a candidate, the more costly the recruitment process becomes. 

In this article, we’ll explore what the time-to-hire metric is, why it’s an important KPI for HR and recruiters, and how outsourcing recruitment can improve it.

What Is Time-to-Hire in Recruitment? 

Time-to-hire (TTH) is a key recruitment KPI that measures the total number of days a company takes to fill a job opening. It tracks the time from when a candidate applies for a job and when that same candidate accepts the job offer.

That’s why the time-to-hire metric is sometimes referred to as the Application Date to Offer Acceptance Date.

This metric indicates your recruitment team’s efficiency in identifying the best applicants for a vacancy and moving those candidates through the interview process to accepting an offer. 

The shorter the time-to-hire, the better for your company, operations, and reputation. On the other hand, a long time-to-hire indicates problems with your recruitment process, talent acquisition, and possibly decision-making. It may also cause top talent to be accepted elsewhere. 

In other words, time-to-hire is an indicator of the health of your hiring process.

The formula looks like this:

Time to Hire = Date Offer Accepted - Date Candidate Entered Pipeline

The result should be in days, not months.

Research by GreenHouse suggests that the average TTH for general roles is 45 days, while for tech and engineering roles, time-to-hire may take 55 days. Recruitment of senior roles, including senior managers, directors, and C-suite executives, can take up to 85 days. 

Time-to-hire vs Time-to-fill 

Often confused with time-to-hire is time-to-fill (TTF), another important HR KPI.

Time-to-fill begins the moment a company lists a vacancy and begins sourcing candidates. It ends when the business finds a suitable applicant and closes the position.

Here’s a quick breakdown of these two important hiring metrics:

What this means is that Time-to-fill provides the big-picture view of your talent acquisition function. It tracks the entire internal lifecycle, from the initial approval of a job requisition to the final acceptance of the offer. 

TTF is the crucial metric for forecasting, budgeting, and business planning, showing your organization’s speed of converting a need to a filled position.

Time-to-Hire (TTH) offers the micro-view, focusing on the efficiency of the hiring process, including the candidate experience. 

TTH allows you to focus on every candidate touchpoint, helping you quickly identify and resolve pipeline bottlenecks that damage the candidate experience and lead to losing top talent.
 

Further reading: How to Create a Positive Candidate Experience [with Examples]

Why Is Time-to-Hire Important? 

Understanding the benefits of this HR metric can help you:

• Measure recruitment efficiency 

It helps you identify the gaps or weaknesses in your recruitment cycle or process. These gaps, mainly delays in responses and a long hiring process, often cause top candidates to drop out of the process or nab offers elsewhere. 

If your competition hires candidates faster, this means you’re likely to keep losing candidates to them. 

In time, a long time-to-hire can negatively impact your employer brand, driving top candidates away from applying. 

Factors that may prolong TTH include long interview cycles, slow or complex feedback loops, slow approvals from team leaders, and even inadequate job descriptions.

• The cost of filling vacancies 

The longer a role remains vacant, the more costly it becomes for the company, resulting in losses in productivity and potentially money. 

A slow time-to-hire strains teams, as they have to carry out the extra workload, leading to employee burnout. This, in turn, can affect your company’s bottom line. From delayed product launches to weak or inconsistent marketing to slowed revenue generation, among other issues. 

• Negative impact on quality-of-hire 

Another HR metric that’s impacted by a slow or long TTH is quality-of-hire. Sometimes managers and recruiters are pressured to close a position, so they compromise on quality, resulting in a bad or inadequate hire. 

This affects the team where the candidate is hired, the candidate themselves, culture fit, and can lead to lower performance. It will often lead to higher employee turnover, resulting in the role being opened again quickly.

• Poor candidate experience 

Top talent is constantly in motion. If they’re not actively seeking new roles, they’re being headhunted.

A slow, cumbersome hiring process creates negative candidate sentiment. Lengthy waits increase the risk of your best applicants losing interest and accepting competing offers, turning a vital recruitment process into a source of brand damage.

Time-to-Hire Metrics: Identifying & Resolving the Bottlenecks 

So, how do you overcome bottlenecks related to time-to-hire? 

Here are four examples of TTH and its impact on recruitment, and how you can solve them: 

1. The vague requirements trap 

• Problem: Often, a company will try to do too much with one vacancy. This results in an ill-defined and vague hiring brief, causing applicants to shy away and recruiters to source wrong profiles. Not to mention, prolonging time-to-hire. 
• Solution: Implement a strict, executive-backed process: the job cannot be posted until HR and the hiring manager formally sign off on a detailed Job Scorecard, defining must-have skills, success metrics for the first six months, and the role’s budget. This creates alignment from day one.

2. The scheduling black hole 

• Problem: Coordinating busy managers' calendars for multiple interview rounds creates a massive time suck. A small two-day delay from one key decision-maker can add 1-2 weeks to the entire process chain, causing top candidates to drop out and accept competing offers.
• Solution: Use scheduling software, often integrated into the ATS, to connect to stakeholders' calendars. Define the number of interviews needed, by whom, and how long each interview would take, and when the hiring manager must get back to you with a response. Coordinate with hiring managers and require weekly slots for conducting interviews. 

3. The feedback vacuum 

• Problem: Hiring managers take 48 to 72 hours (or longer) to process and deliver feedback after an interview. This lack of urgency slows the entire pipeline, leaves candidates feeling unsupported, and stalls recruiter productivity while waiting for the next step approval.
• Solution: Implement strict, measurable Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for internal review steps. For example, "Feedback must be logged in the system within 4 hours of interview completion." This requires executive buy-in and ensures accountability across the organization.

4. The urgency gap 

• Problem: . Sometimes, delays aren't malicious, but cultural: Key leaders are so protective of their time or focus on internal work that they unintentionally de-prioritize the new hire's approval process. This results in a hiring bottleneck.
• Solution: Elevate the time-to-hire metric to a management-level KPI, reviewed alongside financial and operational metrics. When TTH slips, the executive team must address the operational bottleneck, making it clear that slow hiring is a business liability.

How Outsourcing Can Improve Your Time-to-Hire Metrics 

Outsourcing your recruitment process to a specialized partner, like a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) provider or recruitment agency, like Tawzef, can drastically reduce your time-to-hire metric.

From speed to expertise, an RPO provider transforms hiring from a reactive, bottlenecked function.

Here’s how: 

1) Recruitment expertise 

Recruitment agencies offer focused resources and advising expertise that internal teams often lack. 

One of the benefits of outsourcing recruitment is that an external provider doesn’t just execute tasks. They bring specialized knowledge of local and global talent markets, local compliance, and hiring tech. 

This allows them to instantly provide guidance on everything from compensation and benefits packages to salary surveys and benchmarks to running employee background checks to optimizing interview scorecards. This saves your team and company significant time that would otherwise be spent on internal research and trial-and-error.

2) Sourcing and screening efficiency 

One of the largest drains on TTH is the time spent finding qualified talent. RPO partners immediately provide access to a larger, vetted talent pool. 

Using free and premium hiring networks, job boards, databases, and AI in the recruitment process, RPOs don’t have the issues in-house recruitment teams have. 

This efficiency in sourcing and screening allows them to proactively identify, engage, and move passive candidates through the pipeline much faster than conventional recruiting methods.

3) Enhanced standardization and accountability 

Internal misalignment is a recruitment bottleneck. From slow scheduling to delayed feedback. Recruitment and HR agencies enforce strict process standardization and accountability from day one.

They manage interview logistics, ensure candidates receive timely communication, and enforce a structured timeline with measurable SLAs. 

How Tawzef Enhances Time-to-Hire 

Tawzef transforms your time-to-hire from a business liability into a competitive advantage. 

We act as the focused, expert extension of your HR team, eliminating the common pipeline delays that hurt your recruitment process and business.

• A-to-Z hiring process ownership: We take full control of sourcing, CV screening, scheduling, and communication, ensuring accountability at every step.
• Various hiring options: Tawzef provides various recruitment services, including mass recruitment, manpower outsourcing, and compliance.  
• Dedicated account management: Every customer gets their dedicated account manager, ensuring regular updates at every stage (from feedback to offer negotiation). This prevents common delays that cause top candidates to accept competing offers.
• Local and overseas hiring expertise: Our specialized knowledge in high-growth regions like Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) eliminates time wasted on complex compliance issues.
• Offshoring services: Tawzef’s team offers offshoring services, ensuring faster placements for scarce, specialized talent. This includes offshoring from top countries and across industries. 

For companies navigating the highly competitive EMEA market and needing rapid, compliant scale, Tawzef delivers. 

We help move the needle from the industry's high time-to-hire to a strategic, competitive average. Partner with Tawzef to turn slow hiring into strategic growth.

Wrapping It Up  

Time-to-hire isn’t just another HR metric. It’s an indicator of the health of your entire talent acquisition process and a driver of business success.

Remember, the objective is not to simply hire quickly, but to achieve smart speed.

A fast, efficient TTH protects your employer brand, enhances candidate experience, and ensures business growth.

This means leveraging data-driven insights, standardizing your processes, and fostering strong internal accountability to achieve maximum efficiency without ever compromising on the quality of hire.

By resolving bottlenecks like vague requirements and feedback vacuums, you ensure your organization lands the best talent ahead of the competition.

Ready to transform your recruitment?

Partner with Tawzef and gain the specialized expertise and efficient processes needed to drastically reduce your time-to-hire.

Contact our team today for a tailored consultation and start turning slow hiring into strategic, competitive growth.