Time-to-Fill Best Practices for Recruiters and Talent Acquisition Teams

Time to fill is one of the most important metrics in talent acquisition, and one of the most frequently mismanaged. Companies underestimate it in their hiring plans, set unrealistic expectations across the board, and then wonder why the TA team falls behind every quarter.

Forecasting time to fill accurately means using internal data instead of guessing, because bad estimates create downstream problems that most companies do not see coming.

Most Companies Underestimate Time to Fill

Companies have a tendency to underestimate time to fill. When they are doing their hiring plans, they typically make best-case-scenario assumptions versus the reality. If a single software engineer role was filled in 30 days in 2020, that does not mean you should project 30 days for all future software engineer roles. Market conditions are constantly changing and that software engineer might take 60 days today.

We recommend adding two weeks on top of your average time to fill just to be sure you have enough time. Although there is a lot in your control to make hiring more predictable, you are still dealing with people, who can be unpredictable. Adding two weeks will make sure you have extra time and will help you set realistic expectations.

Your time-to-fill estimates should not be averaged out across the entire company. At a minimum, they should be broken out on a department-level basis but ideally on a per-role basis. The best way to come up with accurate time-to-fill estimates on a per-role basis is to look at the data for your specific company.

Use Your Data to Build Accurate Forecasts

Forecasting time to fill for different positions is an exercise made easier with data. Look in your systems to see the average time to fill for technical roles, sales roles, marketing roles, and others. Using internal data is the best way to benchmark.

If you are in a situation where you do not have any data, here are some general time-to-fill guidelines:

• Junior roles: 30 to 45 days.
• Mid-level roles: 45 to 60 days.
• Senior roles, leadership roles, senior director and above: 60 to 90 days.

From this point on, start collecting data to help you generate more accurate forecasts. The companies that invest in tracking this metric by role, department, and seniority level build a compounding advantage over time — each hiring cycle produces better forecasts for the next one.

How Time to Fill Impacts Capacity Planning

Communicating realistic time-to-fill goals to hiring managers, senior leadership, and department heads is critical to setting yourself up for success. A lot of companies end up with a tight five or six week time to fill for every position across the board, and then they do not fill those roles on time and the talent acquisition team ends up looking bad.

Inaccurate time-to-fill estimates can mess up the hiring plan for the entire year.

When you start capacity planning and assigning roles out to your recruiters, the workloads they have to manage end up becoming much larger than planned, which leads to poor outcomes for the entire talent acquisition team.

Consider this: if a recruiter is working on an executive leadership role — VP of Technology or VP of Product, for example — there is a good chance that role takes up 50% of their time. The reality might be they are only working on that singular role 50% of the time, and then they are working on maybe three other positions for the other 50%. That is only four roles, which is contrary to how a lot of companies are doing it — putting 20 to 30 open roles on a recruiter’s plate regardless of difficulty.

Set Your Team Up to Succeed

Given the competitiveness in the market for talent, building in a higher time to fill makes sense. Even if the time to fill is 45 days, you need to give yourself and your team realistic goals and enough time to accomplish them.

The most effective talent acquisition leaders do three things consistently:

They forecast by role, not by company average. A senior engineering hire and an SDR hire have fundamentally different timelines, sourcing strategies, and interview processes. Treating them the same way creates problems on both ends.

They communicate timelines upfront. When a hiring manager submits a requisition, the first conversation should include a realistic time-to-fill estimate with supporting data. This prevents the two-week check-in where the hiring manager asks why they have not seen candidates yet.

They build in buffers. The best-case scenario is not a plan — it is a wish. Adding time to your estimates does not make you slower. It makes you honest, and honest forecasts create trust with leadership.

When Internal Capacity Is Not Enough

There is a point where even the best time-to-fill practices cannot solve the underlying problem: not enough recruiting capacity to keep up with the hiring plan. If your recruiters are carrying 15 to 20 requisitions each, no amount of forecasting will fix the quality and speed trade-off.

This is where companies start evaluating whether to add internal headcount or bring in an embedded recruiting partner who can scale with the hiring plan without requiring a permanent headcount commitment.

How SecureVision Can Help

SecureVision partners with companies to improve their talent acquisition function, including time-to-fill optimization. For more information on time-to-fill best practices, benchmarks, and industry data, contact us.