Time to hire and time to fill sound interchangeable, but they measure different windows. Time to fill counts every day a role is open, starting when the requisition is approved and ending when a candidate accepts the offer. Time to hire counts a shorter window inside that: the days between a candidate applying and accepting the offer.
The practical difference is the pre-application stretch. Time to fill includes the time you spend sourcing, advertising, and waiting for the right person to apply. Time to hire ignores that and focuses on how fast you move a candidate through your process once they are in it. Knowing which one a number refers to changes what it tells you and what you should fix.
Key takeaways
- Time to fill measures the whole vacancy, from requisition approval to offer acceptance. Time to hire measures the candidate window, from application to acceptance.
- The gap between the two metrics is your sourcing and pipeline-building window. A wide gap points to slow sourcing, not a slow interview process.
- Both are averaged the same way: total days across filled roles divided by the number of roles filled.
- Benchmarks vary widely by role and industry, so treat any single number as directional, not a target.
- Use time to fill for workforce planning and time to hire to judge how efficient your hiring process is.
Why the difference matters
These two metrics answer different questions, so confusing them leads to the wrong fix. If your time to fill is high but time to hire is low, your interview process is fast and the delay sits upstream in sourcing. If both are high, the bottleneck is likely inside the pipeline itself. Mislabelling the metric sends you optimising the wrong stage.
The stakes are real for hiring teams. SHRM has warned that a slow time to fill can cost an organisation its shot at top talent, because strong candidates do not wait around. Measuring both numbers, and knowing exactly where each window starts and ends, lets you see whether you are losing people before they apply or after.
The definitions and the difference
Time to fill: the full vacancy window
Time to fill is the number of calendar days it takes to find and hire someone, measured from the approval of a job requisition to the candidate accepting the offer. SHRM frames it this way: the days from when the requisition was opened until the offer was accepted, counted in calendar days, including weekends and holidays. This is your broadest hiring clock. It captures sourcing, advertising, screening, interviewing, and the final decision in one number.
Time to hire: the candidate's journey
Time to hire is the days between the candidate applying and accepting the job offer. It starts the moment a specific person enters your pipeline and ends when they say yes. It does not include the time the role sat open before they applied. Because it tracks one candidate's path, it is a cleaner read on how efficient your screening, interviewing, and decision steps actually are.
The timeline difference: the pre-application window
The two metrics share an end point, offer acceptance, but start at different moments. Time to fill starts at requisition approval. Time to hire starts at application. The gap between them is the pre-application window, meaning how long the role was open before the eventual hire applied. A simple example makes it concrete. A requisition is approved on 1 January. The candidate applies on 21 January and accepts on 31 January. That gives a time to fill of 30 days and a time to hire of 10 days. The 20-day difference is sourcing and waiting time.
How to calculate and average each
For a single hire, both are day counts between their start and end points. To average across many roles, use the same method for both: add up the days for every filled position, then divide by the number of positions filled. Say you fill five roles in 15, 60, 10, 30, and 40 days. Add those to get 155, divide by five, and your average time to fill is 31 days. Average time to hire works the same way, using each candidate's application-to-acceptance span instead.
What each metric tells you
Time to fill tells you how long a vacancy stays open, which matters for workforce planning, team capacity, and the cost of an empty seat. It reflects everything, including how fast you source. Time to hire tells you how efficient your process is once a candidate is engaged. A short time to hire means your screening and interviewing move quickly. Read them together: a large gap between fill and hire points to slow sourcing, while a high time to hire points to internal pipeline drag.
The benchmark caveat
Any benchmark you read is an average across very different roles. Time to fill runs from a couple of weeks for a junior role to a couple of months or more for a specialist or leadership hire. Treat any single number as directional, not universal. A figure that looks slow for one role may be fast for another. The most useful comparison is against your own past performance and against roles of similar seniority and sector, not a one-size-fits-all figure.
Which to use when
Use time to fill when you are planning headcount, forecasting when a seat will be filled, or making the case for the cost of a long vacancy. It answers the business question. Use time to hire when you are auditing your recruiting process and want to know whether your stages move fast enough. It answers the operational question. Most teams track both, because each one isolates a different part of the same problem.
UK benchmarks: how long it really takes
| Aspect | Time to fill | Time to hire |
|---|---|---|
| Clock starts | Requisition approved | Candidate applies or is sourced |
| Clock stops | Offer accepted | Offer accepted |
| What it captures | The whole vacancy, sourcing included | The candidate journey through your pipeline |
| Best used for | Workforce planning and the cost of an empty seat | Judging how efficient your process is |
| Who relies on it most | In-house teams planning headcount | Agencies competing on speed of delivery |
In the UK, official figures show the scale of hiring involved. The Office for National Statistics recorded 707,000 job vacancies for May to July 2026, about 10% below the pre-pandemic level and, outside the pandemic period, the lowest since 2014. Even in a softer market, filling roles is not always quick. The CIPD's Labour Market Outlook for summer 2025 found that 31% of UK employers had hard-to-fill vacancies, based on a survey of more than 2,000 senior HR professionals.
There is no single UK time to fill figure, and any benchmark you see is an average across very different roles. A junior admin role might fill in a couple of weeks, while a specialist or leadership hire can take two months or more. SHRM measures time to fill in calendar days, weekends and holidays included, so the honest way to use a benchmark is to sense-check your own numbers against roles of similar seniority and sector, not to hold every vacancy to one figure.
How agencies and in-house teams use these metrics differently
In-house talent teams tend to live by time to fill. They own the requisition from the moment it is approved, so the whole open-vacancy window is theirs to answer for. An empty seat costs the business in lost output and stretched colleagues, which is why time to fill shows up in workforce planning and board reports.
Recruitment agencies see it from the other end. An agency rarely controls when the requisition was first approved, and it often gets the brief days or weeks later. What an agency competes on is speed of delivery once it has that brief, which maps far more closely to time to hire. The agency that sends a strong, client-ready shortlist first usually wins the placement, because strong candidates do not stay available for long.
This is why agencies also watch fill rate and submission speed, not just raw days. On a contingency model, an agency is only paid when its candidate is hired, so every day of delay is a day a rival can place first. Trimming the steps between receiving a CV and submitting it to the client, including formatting and branding, protects that speed directly.
The practical split is simple. If you run an in-house team, report time to fill for planning but track time to hire to keep your process honest. If you run an agency, time to hire is closer to your real product, so measure it per client and per role, and flag the pre-application delay as the client's to fix rather than yours to hide.
How to reduce time to hire and time to fill
Step 1: Build a candidate database so you don't start from scratch
Keep a database of past applicants and prospects. When a new role opens, you can reach out to people you already know instead of beginning sourcing from zero. This shrinks the pre-application window, which cuts time to fill without touching your interview stages.
Step 2: Source passive candidates ahead of need
Source passive candidates before a role is even open. If you have warm relationships in place, the gap between requisition approval and the first strong application drops. This is one of the few moves that lowers time to fill specifically, because it attacks the sourcing time that time to hire never counts.
Step 3: Break the process into stages and measure each one
Split the hiring process into stages and measure the time between each one. This shows you exactly where candidates stall, whether it is screening, scheduling, or the final decision. Measuring stage by stage turns a vague high number into a specific bottleneck you can fix.
Step 4: Run employee referral programmes
Referral programmes reduce both metrics at once. Referred candidates often arrive pre-vetted and engaged, which speeds up sourcing and shortens screening. They tend to move through the pipeline faster, helping time to hire as well as time to fill.
Step 5: Train interviewers and use communication templates
Train interviewers so they make faster, clearer decisions, and use communication templates to speed up scheduling. Both attack the delays that sit inside time to hire. Faster scheduling and quicker post-interview decisions remove the dead time between stages.
Step 6: Cut the turnaround between receiving a CV and submitting it
For agencies, the time spent tidying, formatting, and branding a candidate CV before it reaches the client sits inside time to hire, between the candidate applying or being sourced and the offer. That manual document work is easy to overlook, but it adds real delay before a strong candidate is even in front of the client. Shortening it trims time to hire directly, and it matters because SHRM warns a slow process can cost you the strongest candidates, who do not wait around.
Do this
- Define the start and end point of each metric before you report a number, so everyone knows which window it covers.
- Average both metrics with the same method: total days divided by roles filled.
- Compare your numbers against your own past performance, not just a generic benchmark.
- Measure the time between each pipeline stage to find the real bottleneck.
- Track time to fill and time to hire together, since each isolates a different problem.
- Segment benchmarks by role, seniority, and industry before judging whether a number is slow.
- Source passive candidates and keep a candidate database to shorten the pre-application window.
- Cut the turnaround between receiving a CV and submitting it to the client, so document prep does not add days to time to hire.
Common mistakes to avoid
Treating the two metrics as the same number
Time to fill and time to hire share an end point but start at different moments. Using them interchangeably hides where your delay actually lives. Always state which window you mean.
Optimising the wrong stage
If time to fill is high but time to hire is low, your interview process is already fast and the problem is sourcing. Speeding up interviews you have already made fast wastes effort. Read the gap between the two before you act.
Treating one benchmark as a universal target
Benchmarks vary widely by role and industry. A specialist or senior vacancy runs far longer than a junior one, so an average pulled from mixed roles means little. Holding every role to a single number sets unfair targets and triggers bad decisions.
Mixing calendar days and business days
SHRM measures time to fill in calendar days, including weekends and holidays. If some of your roles count business days and others count calendar days, your average is meaningless. Pick one convention and apply it everywhere.
Reporting an average without segmenting
A single average across very different roles can hide a serious problem. In the earlier example, one 60-day hire sits inside a set that averages just 31 days. Segment by role type so outliers do not get buried.
Ignoring the pre-application window entirely
Teams that only watch time to hire miss the sourcing delay completely. The gap between requisition approval and the first strong application is often where the real time is lost. Measure time to fill too.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between time to hire and time to fill?
Time to fill counts every day a role is open, from when the job requisition is approved to when a candidate accepts the offer. Time to hire counts a shorter window inside that, from the day a candidate applies to the day they accept. They share an end point but start at different moments. The gap between them is the pre-application window, which is mostly sourcing time.
How long does it take a recruitment agency to fill a vacancy in the UK?
There is no single UK figure, because it depends on the role, sector, and seniority. A junior role can take a couple of weeks, while a specialist or leadership hire can take two months or more. UK employers often find roles hard to fill: the CIPD's summer 2025 Labour Market Outlook found that 31% of employers had hard-to-fill vacancies. A good agency competes by shortening the candidate window, so it focuses on time to hire once it has the brief.
Do recruitment agencies and in-house teams measure hiring speed the same way?
Not quite. In-house teams usually lead with time to fill, because they own the vacancy from requisition approval and answer for the cost of an empty seat. Agencies lean on time to hire, because they often receive the brief late and compete on how fast they deliver a strong shortlist once they have it. Both should track both numbers, but the metric that reflects their real job differs.
How do you calculate average time to fill?
Add the number of days needed to fill each position, then divide by the number of positions filled. For example, five roles filled in 15, 60, 10, 30, and 40 days total 155 days. Divided by five, that gives an average time to fill of 31 days. Average time to hire uses the same method, with each candidate's application-to-acceptance span.
What is a good time to fill benchmark?
There is no universal figure, because time to fill varies widely by role, sector, and seniority. A junior role may fill in a couple of weeks, while a specialist or leadership hire can take two months or more. UK employers often find roles hard to fill: the CIPD's summer 2025 Labour Market Outlook found that 31% had hard-to-fill vacancies. Compare against your own past results for similar roles, not a single benchmark.
Does time to fill include weekends and holidays?
Yes, in the SHRM definition. SHRM measures time to fill in calendar days, counting from when the requisition was opened until the offer was accepted, including weekends and holidays. The key is consistency. If you mix calendar days for some roles and business days for others, your average becomes unreliable, so pick one convention and apply it across every role.
Which metric should I focus on to speed up hiring?
It depends on where your delay sits. If time to fill is high but time to hire is low, your interviews are already fast and the bottleneck is sourcing, so build a candidate database and source passive candidates earlier. If time to hire is high, the drag is inside your pipeline, so train interviewers, use scheduling templates, and measure each stage.
Does slow CV formatting affect time to hire?
Yes, for agencies it can. Time to hire runs to the moment an offer is accepted, and for an agency the practical clock includes preparing and submitting the candidate to the client. Every hour a CV waits to be tidied, formatted, and branded before it goes out adds to that window. SHRM warns that a slow process can cost you the strongest candidates, because they do not wait around, so cutting document turnaround is one lever that shortens time to hire without touching your interview stages.
The bottom line
Time to fill and time to hire are not rivals. They are two clocks on the same hire, started at different moments. Time to fill watches the whole vacancy from requisition approval to acceptance. Time to hire watches the candidate's path from application to acceptance. The gap between them tells you whether your delay is in sourcing or inside your pipeline, and that single insight points you to the right fix. Average both the same way, segment by role before judging any benchmark, and measure each stage to find where the days actually go.
These two metrics are part of a wider set of recruiting measures, alongside cost per hire, quality of hire, and offer acceptance rate, so read them in context rather than in isolation. One small lever on time to hire is the speed of the candidate-document step. A tool like RefineCV can format candidate CVs faster, which trims some of the manual work between application and offer. It is a minor input to the bigger picture, but every removed delay helps.
Trim the manual steps in your pipeline
Slow candidate-document work adds to time to hire. RefineCV formats candidate CVs into your branded template fast. Start free with 10 CVs, no credit card, then $0.40 per CV, or $50/month for 200.
Related reading: recruitment metrics that matter most, how to calculate cost per hire, how to measure quality of hire, and source of hire explained.
Sources
- SHRM, Staffing Metrics: Time to Fill Can Kill Prospects of Landing Top Talent (2012): Time to fill is measured in calendar days, from when the job requisition was opened until the offer was accepted, including weekends and holidays.
- Office for National Statistics, Vacancies and jobs in the UK: August 2026 (2026): The UK had 707,000 job vacancies in May to July 2026, down 6,000 on the previous quarter and about 10% below the pre-pandemic (January to March 2020) level. Outside the pandemic period, the last time vacancies were this low was 2014. A vacancy is a position for which employers are actively seeking recruits from outside their organisation.
- CIPD, Labour Market Outlook (summer 2025) (2025): 31% of UK employers reported hard-to-fill vacancies in summer 2025, based on a survey of 2,018 senior HR professionals and decision-makers.