Time to fill

Time to fill is the clock from the company's side. It starts the moment the vacancy is approved or opened, and it stops when someone accepts the offer. Everything in between counts: writing the ad, getting it live, waiting for applicants, screening, interviews, the offer.

That's why it's such a useful number for the business. Every day a role is open is a day work isn't getting done, or someone else is doing it on top of their own job. And it's why time to fill and time to hire aren't the same. Time to fill includes all the time before the right candidate even showed up. If it's long, the question is where the time goes: is it slow to get the job live, are you waiting weeks for enough applicants, or is the process after that slow?

Different companies start the clock at different moments (approval, posting, the hiring manager's request), so pick one, write it down and stick to it.

How to calculate it

Count the days from the date the vacancy was opened to the date the candidate accepted the offer.

Example

A company's time to fill for engineers is long, and they blame the market. When they break it down, they see the job sat in approval for a while before it was even posted, and interviews took weeks to schedule. The market wasn't the whole story, their own process was a big part of it.