What Is Time to Fill? How To Reduce It

Ever felt like you're in a race against time to find the perfect candidate for your job openings? We get it!

Taking forever to fill positions not only means you might lose out on great talent but also leads to rising hiring costs.

How to cut off precious time in your hiring process while ensuring you snag the best talent out there? What is time to fill? Let’s dive in!

What Is Time To Fill?

Time to fill in recruitment is a way to see how fast a recruitment team finds and selects candidates. Knowing about this metric can be really helpful if you want to improve your company’s hiring process.

You can calculate the time to fill each vacancy or track this KPI for all the job openings during a certain period.

Is the Time To Fill the Same as the Time To Hire?

Time to hire and time to fill differ by the recruitment stages they cover.

Time to hire measures the duration from when a candidate applies for a job to when they accept the offer, while time to fill metrics measure the entire hiring process's length, starting from when the job is posted until the candidate agrees to the job.

Check out other essential recruitment KPIs you need to track!

Some Statistics of the Average Time To Fill A Position

What is a good time to fill metric? There’s no exact answer since it depends on the company size, industry and position specifics.

According to the Society of Human Resource Management, the average time to hire is 42 days.

Nevertheless, the average time to hire fluctuates across industries, ranging from as low as 10 days to as high as 54 days. On the flip side, certain organizations can complete the hiring process on the very same day they initiate it.

The Fallout of a Long Time To Fill

The longer it takes to hire someone, the more money it costs the company. Also, it can slow down work, with hiring managers spending lots of time on interviews, and recruiters might miss out on good candidates because things are moving too slowly.

But if the hiring process is smooth and quick, you can bring in new team members quickly, fill any gaps in your workforce, and ensure they're contributing to the company's success. You need to find a balance between hiring quickly and finding the right fit. Keeping an eye on how long it takes to hire can help you work more efficiently and make things better for job seekers, too.

How To Reduce the Time To Fill?

We've put together some tips for you on how to hire faster and more efficiently.

Assess your current recruiting process

Walk through the recruiting funnel, analyze all hiring stages, and determine where the biggest delays occur. For example:

• How long are recruiters waiting to contact a potential candidate?
• Are there too many people participating in the interview? Are all team members involved in the interview process directly responsible for the position?
• Do you have a standard process for soliciting job applications and collecting CVs?

Keep in mind that even gradual changes and slight improvements can make a big difference. A few minutes or hours of time at one stage, a few more at another, can improve your efficiency for a couple of days.

Improve your interview process

A well-structured and efficient interview process not only helps in identifying top talent but also enhances the overall candidate experience. Explore new ways to make interviews easier. For example:

• Decide in advance how many interview stages you will conduct before the offer stage. This will help hiring managers track the process and help candidates feel more comfortable knowing what to expect in advance.
• Limit the number of interviews for all the positions in each department.
• Ask interviewers to create a basic set of questions for all candidates to make it easier for you to compare results.

You can automate interview scheduling by using an ATS. For example, Axterior allows to send invitation emails directly from an ATS using integration with Gmail and Google Calendar.

Continuously source for candidates and form talent pools

Continuous sourcing helps in building and maintaining talent pools. By consistently searching for potential candidates, recruiters create a database of qualified individuals who can be tapped into when a relevant job opening arises. This minimizes the time-to-fill positions and ensures a quicker response to business needs.

Source for candidates constantly on professional platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, and XING. Reduce the time of this process by using auto-fill via special Chrome Extensions. For example, a recruiter in a mid-size company can add 30-40 candidates to the database in 4 hours. With smart resume parsing, recruiters can perform this process 2 times faster!

Creating a talent pool takes away the stress and costs of advertising jobs, searching for candidates, and doing extensive background checks. Plus, it boosts your company's image, helps you plan for future hiring needs, and brings in applicants who genuinely want to work for you.

Implement automation with ATS

Having the right recruiting automation system can significantly reduce your time to hire. You can save time by automating tasks and functions, such as:

• resume parsing
• сreating jobs based on automated job requests from hiring managers
• managing candidates and communicating with hiring managers through custom job pipelines
• sending automated emails to candidates
• managing talent pools
• analyzing data, such as recruitment channels and time to fill metrics.

Improve your careers page

When job seekers hear about a job opening or show interest in your industry, they often check out your careers page to get the scoop on your company and see what jobs are available. A well-designed career page provides a positive experience for job seekers. It's user-friendly, informative, and easy to navigate. When candidates can easily find and apply for positions, they are more likely to complete the application process promptly.

To make the application process efficient, share lots of info about the job, but don't overload potential applicants. Think about the questions most applicants might have about the job or your company and give them that info upfront. This way, you can filter out candidates who might have dropped out of the hiring process if they learned key details later.

For example, get inspired by Spotify’s career page.

Here's a great example of how to blend your company's identity with your work culture. Spotify uses phrases like "Join the Band" and "Backstage" on their job pages, targeting candidates who share a deep passion for their product: music.

While not every company has something as exciting as music, you can still make your careers page interesting by connecting it to what your company does. This way, you'll attract candidates who are genuinely passionate about your work.

Make your job descriptions realistic

Time to fill in recruitment significantly depends on the candidate engagement. Long and demanding job descriptions can discourage job seekers. To make your job posts more inviting and attract qualified candidates, focus on highlighting the key responsibilities and only the necessary qualifications for the role. This way, your job ads will look less intimidating and encourage more suitable applicants to apply.

Make cultural adjustment

Localization is the key. A whopping 85% of customers won't buy a product if it's not in their language. Customers spread the word about your company's great products or services. Employees do, too, plus they can serve as recruitment advocates. This highlights how important it is for a company to speak the language of its potential employees.

To do this, you can create separate career websites for different groups of job seekers. This way, everything on the site, like messages, pictures, and info, can be just right for each group. If you target certain regions for potential hiring, think about creating separate social media accounts run in a specific language.  It's all about making a special connection with each type of employee.

Also, localizing contact information is quite practical. For example, if you want to hire in France, adding street address, currency, phone numbers, or dates in the US format can be confusing. So, always use the local standards in your content to avoid any misunderstandings with potential candidates.

Introduce an employee referral program

Encouraging your existing staff to suggest excellent candidates is yet another methodology to expedite your hiring process. Establish an employee referral program and consistently promote it. 88% of employers rate employee referral programs as the best source of applicants.

Additionally, ensure that you provide enticing and innovative incentives for employee referrals, motivating your team to actively participate in aiding your search for new talent.

For instance, Fiverr, a freelancing marketplace, aimed to boost employee referrals by implementing a system that tracked social job sharing and incorporated gamification. They introduced a points-based incentive system for sharing job openings and referring friends.

To achieve this, Fiverr awards employees with points and recognition for their actions, all while keeping them updated on the progress of their referrals.

Conclusion

As you can see, cutting down on time to fill enhances the application and screening process, streamlines hiring, and enables the swift placement of critical positions with exceptionally qualified candidates.

It's vital to remember that the quest for a shorter time to fill isn't just about speed; it's about precision. Ensuring the right candidates are matched with the right roles is at the heart of efficient hiring. It's where success lies!