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Time to Hire

A recruiting metric that measures how long it takes to move a candidate from application or contact to hire.

businessPublished 2026/06/06Last verified 2026/06/06

References

  1. OPM Hiring Information

    U.S. Office of Personnel Management

    Official hiring information resource used as context for hiring process measurement.

FAQs

Is time to hire the same as time to fill?
Not always. Time to hire often tracks candidate movement, while time to fill usually starts when a role opens and ends when it is filled.
Why can time to hire be hard to compare?
It depends on start dates, end dates, paused roles, stage definitions, role complexity, and candidate source.

Related Terms

  • Cost per Hire

    A recruiting metric that estimates hiring cost by dividing recruiting spend by the number of hires.

  • Quality of Hire

    A recruiting outcome metric for how well a hire performs, stays, and fits the role after joining.

  • Candidate Experience

    The quality of a candidate's interactions with an employer during sourcing, application, interviews, and offers.

Related Items

  • Greenhouse

    Greenhouse is an applicant tracking and hiring platform for structured recruiting, interview workflows, hiring team collaboration, and candidate pipeline management.

  • Lever

    Lever is an AI-powered hiring platform combining ATS, recruiting CRM, automation, analytics, and collaborative hiring workflows.

  • SmartRecruiters

    SmartRecruiters is an AI-powered talent acquisition and hiring platform for recruiting workflows, candidate experience, marketplace integrations, and hiring operations.

  • Ashby

    Ashby is an all-in-one recruiting platform covering ATS, scheduling, CRM, sourcing, analytics, and AI-assisted hiring workflows.

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What it means

Time to hire is a recruiting metric that measures how long it takes to move a candidate from a defined starting point to hire. The start point may be application date, recruiter contact, screening completion, or candidate entry into an active requisition. The end point is usually accepted offer or hire date. In recruiting software, time-to-hire reporting depends heavily on consistent stage definitions and timestamps.

Why buyers should care

Time to hire helps teams understand process speed, candidate experience, recruiter workload, and hiring-manager responsiveness. It can be misleading if definitions vary across roles or if paused searches, reopened requisitions, and internal candidates are not handled consistently. Buyers should evaluate whether software explains start and end dates, stage timestamps, exclusions, filters, and drill-down from summary metrics to candidate records.

Evaluation checks

Review stage history, timestamp quality, requisition status logic, paused role handling, source segmentation, reporting exports, and dashboard definitions. Ask vendors how time to hire differs from time to fill and how the system handles reopened candidates. Strong time-to-hire reporting makes bottlenecks visible without flattening role context.

This glossary entry is buyer-oriented guidance, not legal, compliance, or financial advice.