Time to Fill

Last updated August 31, 2026 · A recruiting metrics definition, with the formula and the adjacent metrics it's often confused with

Time to fill is the number of calendar days between when a job requisition is approved (or posted) and when a candidate accepts the offer. The formula is offer-acceptance date minus requisition-approval date — for example, a requisition approved March 3 and an offer accepted March 20 is 17 days. Average time to fill is the total days across all filled roles divided by the number of roles. It's a company-side measure of the whole hiring process, distinct from time to hire, which measures the process from the candidate's side.

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How to calculate time to fill

For a single role, subtract the day the requisition was approved (or the job was posted, if that's the start point your team uses) from the day the candidate accepted the offer:

The result is only as consistent as the two dates you pick. A team that starts the clock at requisition approval and a team that starts it at job posting will get different numbers for the identical hire — pick one start point and use it for every role, or the average becomes uncomparable month to month.

Time to fill vs. time to hire

These two metrics get used interchangeably, but they measure different spans and answer different questions:

• Time to fill runs from requisition approval (or posting) to offer acceptance — the company's view of how long the role sat open, including whatever happened before anyone applied.
• Time to hire runs from when a specific candidate applies to when that candidate accepts — the candidate's view of how long the process took, which is usually a shorter window than time to fill.

Time to fill is the better metric for staffing planning and budget conversations, since it captures the full cost of an open role including any delay before the first application came in. Time to hire is the better metric for evaluating how efficient the interview-to-offer process itself is, independent of how long the role sat unadvertised or under-sourced.

What actually moves time to fill

• Approval and posting delay. The days between a manager wanting to fill a role and the requisition actually going live are often the largest, least-visible chunk of the total.
• Applicant volume and quality in the first week. A role that gets qualified applicants immediately moves through screening faster than one that sits with a thin or mismatched pool, regardless of how efficient the interview process is.
• Interview loop length. Each additional round, and each day of scheduling lag between rounds, adds directly to the total.
• Approval chain on the offer. Multi-step sign-off on pay or terms can add days after a candidate has already been selected.
• Candidate response time. Time to fill counts until acceptance, not until the offer is sent — a candidate who takes a week to decide adds that week to the number.

For hourly and frontline roles specifically, the first lever — getting a qualified pool fast — usually explains more of the variation than interview-process efficiency does, since these roles typically have shorter interview loops to begin with.

Where time to fill connects to the numbers you already track

A role that sits open longer keeps costing money the whole time it's open, which is what a cost-per-hire calculation is built to capture. If the reason a role reopens quickly is churn rather than a new position, that's a turnover rate question, and the turnover cost calculator puts a number on what that churn is costing separately from the fill itself. Time to fill, cost per hire, and turnover aren't the same metric, but a slow time to fill and a high turnover rate usually show up together, since both point back to the size and quality of the applicant pool.

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