Time to Fill: How to Calculate It and Bring It Down

Your time to fill is often the first recruiting number a hiring manager or client asks about, because it shows how long open roles stay open. It looks simple to calculate, but the dates you choose, the way you summarize several roles and the stages inside the total all change what the number says.

In plain terms, time to fill is the number of days from the moment a job requisition opens to the moment a candidate accepts the offer. Recruiters use it to forecast new searches, set expectations with the hiring manager or client, and see which stages slow a role down.

What time to fill measures and what it leaves out

The metric counts every calendar day from when a requisition opens to when a candidate accepts the offer, including weekends and holidays. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) uses this definition in its 2025 recruiting benchmarking report. Using the same definition keeps your figure comparable with that benchmark.

The endpoint is offer acceptance, not the new hire's first day. That keeps notice periods and relocation out of the figure, since recruiters have little influence over how long a candidate needs to give notice. The total also covers work by approvers, the hiring manager, and the candidate, so a long figure on its own doesn't show which part took the time.

How to calculate time to fill

To calculate time to fill for one role, subtract the date the requisition opened from the date the offer was accepted. For a period such as a quarter, you calculate the figure for each role filled in that period and then summarize the results in one of two ways:

• One role: the offer acceptance date minus the requisition open date, counted in calendar days.
• Average for a period: the total days across every role filled in the period, divided by the number of roles filled.
• Median for a period: the middle value once the roles are sorted from shortest to longest.

Suppose a team filled five roles in a quarter, and they took 28, 35, 41, 44, and 97 days. These are numbers chosen for the arithmetic, not benchmark data. Together they add up to 245 days, so the average is 49 days, while the median is 41 days.

The average sits above four of the five roles because one hard search ran to 97 days. That's why the SHRM report uses medians, which it says help avoid extreme outliers skewing the average. Reporting both figures, with a short note on the outlier, gives a hiring manager or client a more accurate picture than either number alone.

Count each role in the period when its offer is accepted. Canceled searches never reach an accepted offer, so they fall outside the formula.

Which start and end dates should you use?

Use the requisition open date and the offer acceptance date if you want your figure to line up with SHRM's benchmark. Other choices are reasonable, but each one answers a slightly different question.

Some teams start the clock at the approval date because a requisition can sit in an approval queue before anyone can recruit for it. Others start at the posting date, which isolates the time recruiters spend once the role is public. At the other end, some teams stop at the new hire's start date, since that's when the hiring manager finally has help.

Starting at posting produces a shorter number than SHRM's, and ending at the start date produces a longer one, so neither compares cleanly with the benchmark. The definition holds up best when you write it down and apply it the same way to every role. If your dates changed partway through the year, mention it when you share the number, so a new definition isn't read as a change in performance.

Time to fill vs time to hire

Time to hire is often defined as the days from a candidate's first contact or application to their offer acceptance. It starts later and follows a person rather than a role, so it shows how quickly your process moves someone through once you've found them.

Reading the two side by side tells you where to look. A long role-based figure with a short time to hire suggests the days went into approvals, posting, or finding the right person. A long time to hire points toward interviews, feedback, and decisions instead.

What's the average time to fill?

In SHRM's 2025 survey, the median time to fill was about a month and a half for both executive and nonexecutive positions. The same report describes this as a shift from 2022, when the data showed a 16-day median difference between the two groups.

Organization size makes a bigger difference in the 2025 data. Extra-large organizations, those with 5,000 or more employees, reported 61 days for nonexecutive positions and 60 days for executive positions. The report adds that they spend nearly twice as much time getting positions approved, posting jobs, and conducting interviews.

These figures come from 2,371 SHRM members surveyed in early 2025, so they describe in-house HR teams at U.S. employers, and the responses weren't weighted. They serve as a reference point in employer conversations. Agency recruiters can compare more accurately to their own history by client and role type.

Breaking the total into hiring stages

The SHRM report measures seven separate stages between a position opening and the candidate's acceptance. Tracking the same stages shows where a search slowed down and who can speed it up.

Screening and interviewing deserve close attention, since SHRM's survey summary found they alone average 8 to 9 days each. Those are averages rather than medians, but they give you a rough reference for the two stages recruiters handle most directly.

Once you can see the stages, the conversation with a hiring manager or client becomes more specific. If approval took longer than the rest of the search combined, the fix sits with the approval process. If the gap falls between the final interview and the decision, a feedback deadline may help. A recruiting funnel view also shows whether a slow stage is losing candidates.

How can you reduce time to fill without missing strong candidates?

You can shorten the total time by improving the stages you and the hiring manager control, starting with the slowest stage your data shows. The options below follow the process order.

• Plan approvals ahead: When openings are predictable, such as backfills or growth roles, getting approval before the need is urgent removes days that sourcing can't recover. A hiring plan that lists expected roles by quarter lets approvers sign off early.
• Agree on the role before posting: An intake conversation that settles the job requirements, salary range, and interview steps lets the posting go live quickly. It also gives screening clear criteria and lowers the chance of restarting the search.
• Shorten the stretch to a first shortlist: Review applicants daily and source in parallel, instead of waiting to see who applies, to bring strong candidates forward sooner. Track sourcing metrics such as days from posting to shortlist to see whether that effort is working.
• Hold interview time in advance: Reserving slots on the panel's calendars before candidates are ready cuts the scheduling back-and-forth that slows each round when calendars are full.
• Decide with written feedback: When interviewers complete an interview scorecard soon after each conversation, the debrief can happen quickly, and the decision rests on notes rather than memory.
• Prepare the offer early: Confirm the salary range, approval path, and start-date options before the final interview so the offer can go out soon after the decision.

Some days are worth keeping, though. Removing an interview that tests a needed skill, or pressuring a candidate to decide quickly, can lower the number without improving the hire.

How agency recruiters report the number

Agency recruiters can report the figure in two parts: the client's total from requisition opening to acceptance, and the agency's portion from the day it received the search. The client's clock may have started well before you were engaged, perhaps after an internal search. In that case, the full total says more about the client's process than about yours.

Reporting both numbers lets the client see how long the role was open overall and how quickly the search moved once you had it. Approval habits and interview schedules differ from one client to the next, so keep the figures separate by account. Tracking analytics by client makes it easier to see which accounts need longer searches so you can plan and price them accordingly.

In-house recruiters face a similar situation when another recruiter hands over a role or reopens it after a declined offer. Recording the handover date alongside the original open date serves the same purpose.

Pair the speed figure with quality of hire

The speed figure only describes how fast a role closed, so it's most useful next to a measure of whether the hire worked out. The same SHRM summary found that only one in five organizations track quality of hire, so you may need to set up a quality measure yourself.

A quality measure doesn't need to be elaborate. It can be as simple as whether the hiring manager or client rates the new hire as meeting expectations at an agreed checkpoint. Adding whether the person is still in the role a year later covers the other half, since an early departure sends the role back to the start.

If you already report cost per hire, combining speed, cost, and quality gives leadership a more balanced view. An HR dashboard that shows all three by role type or client also makes slower searches easier to explain.

Check your stage dates before you set a target

A reliable figure rests on a written definition of the dates, a summary showing the median and the average, and a stage breakdown. Together, they give you and the hiring manager or client a shared view of which stages to work on. Before you agree to a target, pull the stage dates for last quarter's filled roles and look at which stage took the most time.