Time to hire

Time to hire is the clock from the candidate's side. It starts when a person enters your process, usually when they apply or when you first approach them, and it stops when they accept the offer. So it doesn't measure how long it takes to find people, it measures how fast you are once they're there.

That's the part that's completely in your control, and it's where a lot of good candidates get lost. Good people often have other options. If you take days to call them, then a week to plan an interview, then another round, someone else will make them an offer first. Or they just stop replying. Slow processes create ghosting on both sides.

It's often mixed up with time to fill, which starts earlier, when the vacancy opens. You want to know both. A long time to fill with a short time to hire means you struggle to find people. A long time to hire means you're losing the ones you found.

How to calculate it

Count the days from the date a candidate applied (or entered your process) to the date they accepted the offer.

Example

A recruitment agency looks at the candidates they lost after the first interview. Many of them accepted another job while they were waiting for the second round. The agency starts planning both interviews in the same week, and their time to hire drops along with the number of candidates who disappear halfway.