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HR Glossary

Time to hire
vs time to fill

HR metrics
What is the difference between time to hire and time to fill?

Time to fill measures the days from a requisition opening to an offer being accepted, while time to hire measures the days from a candidate entering the process to accepting. Fill measures process speed end to end; hire measures how fast you move once the right person shows up.

Time to hire reference points

Time to fillRequisition open → offer accepted
Time to hireCandidate enters process → offer accepted
Benchmark medianAbout 39 days to fill (SHRM)
Cost of each dayThe role's daily cost of vacancy

Why the distinction matters

The two diagnose different failures. A long time to fill with a short time to hire means sourcing is the constraint: the process moves fast once candidates exist, but they take too long to arrive. A long time to hire means the process itself is the constraint: slow screening, interview scheduling drift, approval bottlenecks. Fixing the wrong one is a quarter of wasted effort, so measure both before prescribing.

What is a normal time to fill?

The SHRM median sits around 39 days. Senior, specialised and security-cleared roles legitimately run longer; high-volume frontline hiring should run far shorter. Every day of it has a price: multiply the days a role sits open by its daily cost of vacancy and the case for fixing the bottleneck writes itself.

Where the days actually go

In most audits the elapsed time is dominated by waiting, not evaluating: days lost between application and first review, between interviews, and between final interview and offer. Structured scheduling, pre-agreed interview panels and offer approval delegated in advance routinely remove a week or more without touching selection quality.

Next step

Calculator

Time to Hire Calculator

Put a number on it. Free, no sign-up, every benchmark sourced.

Open the calculator →Related term

Cost of vacancy

Cost of vacancy is the value lost for every day a role sits unfilled, most simply estimated as the role's share of revenue per working day, scaled by role level.

Read the definition →Related term

Cost per hire

Cost per hire is the average amount spent to fill a role, calculated as total internal and external recruiting costs divided by the number of hires in the period.

Read the definition →Related term

Offer acceptance rate

Offer acceptance rate is the percentage of job offers that candidates accept, calculated as offers accepted divided by offers extended.

Read the definition →HR Glossary

All terms

Every definition, with the local rules, rates and thresholds attached.

Browse the glossary →

Where
Compono Hire fits.

Compono Hire is an applicant tracking system (ATS) that measures fit before you make the offer, alongside the process every ATS runs.

Speed matters because good candidates do not wait. Neither should your process.

See how it works
Compono Hire
400+
stores on one standard process

Common questions

Which metric should we report?

Both, cut by role family. Fill is the business-facing number (how long is the seat empty); hire is the process-improvement number (how fast do we move on real candidates).

Does faster hiring mean worse hiring?

Not when the speed comes from removing dead time. It does when it comes from removing evaluation. Cut queues, not signal.

This page is general information, not legal advice. We check figures annually and update them on a best-efforts basis, but employment rules change and we cannot promise everything here is current or complete. Before you act on it, confirm the detail with the official source for your jurisdiction or your own adviser. Last reviewed July 2026.