It will be more useful for those with a high proportion of hires that they need to fill near term as opposed to long-term requisitions.
Description
Average number of days elapsed between requisition date and offer acceptance for internal and external hires.
Formula
Total days to fill / Offers / Accepted
Interpretation
Average Time to Fill measures the average length of time that elapses from the date a job vacancy is opened to the date a candidate accepts an offer to fill the position. In many cases, organisations use this measure as an indicator of the efficiency of the recruiting process. Most requisitions, when opened, represent a current or impending vacancy or a newly created position.
To minimise productivity losses and other organisational costs, employers aim to shorten the duration of these position gaps. When hires are needed as soon as possible (‘asap’ hires), Average Time to Fill can be an appropriate measure of the timeliness and efficiency of the recruiting process.
However, employers may also have requisitions that are created many weeks or months in advance of when the hire is actually needed (long-term hires). Recruiters may have flexibility to either reprioritise these requisitions or simply take a greater amount of time and care in developing advertising,
screening applicants and performing other pieces of the recruiting process, as long as that does not hamper the organisation’s prospects for securing top candidates.
Average Time to Fill may be greatly impacted by the effectiveness of processes that take place even before a requisition is opened, such as planning and needs definition processes, as well as the requisition design process.
Organisations with high results for Average Time to Fill may wish to investigate these preparatory process steps in addition to those constituting the days to fill a requisition.
Other recruitment activities that may impact cycle times include resume collection, selection of candidates to interview and selection of candidates to hire.
Average Time to Fill is very similar to Average Time to Start, which measures elapsed time from the date the requisition is opened to the actual start date of the hire.
Average Time to Start will be a more useful measure in assessing how quickly hires are in seat for positions that were vacant, while Average Time to Fill does not factor in the delay between offer acceptance and actual start date, which can vary from one day to several months.
Data Sourcing
Organisations typically source requisition dates and offer acceptance information from an e -recruitment system or from the recruiting table in an HRIS.
Analysis
This measure may be analysed by organisational unit, location job function, pay grade, employment level, occupation or job family to determine how process efficiency varies across job requisition types and organisational areas. Also, organisations may wish to break down the Average Time to Fill into component pieces of the recruiting process, such as advertising, screening, interviewing, etc.
Limitations
Average Time to Fill, as mentioned, does not take into account the requisitions that need to be filled short term versus long term.
Average Time to Fill ignores possible delays in the full recruiting cycle caused by the elapsed time between offer acceptance and actual start date. It does not speak to the quality of hires or the cost of the recruitment process. Also, it does not measure any aspect of the volume of candidates flowing through the recruitment process.
Targets
In setting targets, organisations may consider the typical composition of requisitions and the processes and challenges that accompany that composition. This composition can include requisitions at various employment levels and pay grades, various job skills sought and the proportion of ‘asap’ hires needed versus long-term hires.
Targets relative to a benchmark group for Average Time to Fill will only be relevant to the extent that organisations have similar hiring needs (e.g. types of positions, advance notice of vacancies) and similar patterns for near- and long-term requisitioning.
Within a relevant benchmark group, an organisation would wish to target moving results toward the 25th percentile to achieve high efficiency, assuming quality of new hire fit and performance can be maintained at this level.