Time to hire is a measure of recruitment speed, usually counted from the hiring request to an accepted offer or to the actual start date. In frontline roles it is among the most important metrics: while a vacancy is open, its shifts are covered by everyone else's overtime.
Why speed matters more than it appears to
An open vacancy is not an absence of cost but a hidden one. An uncovered shift is paid for in premium-rate overtime, the site runs with thinner coverage, and some revenue is lost. Those losses usually exceed the cost of the recruitment itself.
In high-volume roles there is a second effect: candidates do not wait. A sales assistant or courier who applied to four vacancies starts at whichever answered first. So in frontline hiring a company competes on response speed rather than on terms.
How to measure it properly
One number gives little: it only means something alongside the points at which it is measured.
- Fix the start of the count in advance: the manager's request or the job posting — the figures will differ.
- Count time to fill (to the start date) and time to hire (to the accepted offer) separately: the difference shows how long paperwork takes.
- Look at time per stage, not only the total: the whole delay usually sits in one transition, most often waiting for the hiring manager's interview.
- Use the median rather than the mean: one rare, long-running vacancy skews the mean and hides the normal flow.
How this works in Verifix
In Verifix Recruit every move a candidate makes through the funnel carries a date, so time to hire and time per stage are computed automatically rather than reconstructed from email.
Paperwork speeds up too: an accepted offer goes straight into document generation in E-Docs with digital signing, and the gap between "they said yes" and "they started" stops being a week of waiting for forms.
In short
An open frontline vacancy costs more than the recruitment: it is paid for in overtime and lost revenue. Watch the median per stage, not the company average.