Recruitment calculator
Time to Fill Calculator
Estimate average time to fill by comparing approved openings, completed hires, and total days taken to close those roles. This helps recruiting teams connect vacancy speed to hiring capacity and workforce planning pressure.
Published under the HR Hub Editorial Team institutional byline and maintained by Michael Walmer, the site operator. No independent professional review is claimed unless a named reviewer is shown.
Time to Fill Formula
Average Time to Fill = Total Calendar Days to Fill Included Roles Closed Roles / Completed Hires
Inputs used in this calculator
- Approved Open Roles: Roles officially approved and opened during the review period.
- Completed Hires: Roles filled and counted in the period.
- Total Calendar Days to Fill Included Roles: Combined days required to close the completed hires.
How to use the result
- Enter the number of approved open roles in the period.
- Enter the number of completed hires used for the calculation.
- Enter the total calendar days for the same included filled requisitions.
- Review average days to fill with role mix, requisition volume, recruiter caseload, and process data.
Method, scope, and sources
Closed-requisition average = total calendar-day durations from one documented requisition start event to candidate offer acceptance ÷ the count of included filled requisitions or positions. The compact and advanced views use the same supported core average; unsupported throughput and recruiter-capacity outputs have been removed from the advanced view.
Use the same start event, offer-acceptance endpoint, calendar-day rule, unit, period, role cohort, and inclusion/exclusion policy for every record. Open requisitions, employee start dates, stage time, workload, throughput, backlog, recruiter capacity, and quality require separate data and models. This is not a universal performance benchmark.
Method status: Partially supported.
Worked example
Hypothetical: four included filled requisitions use requisition approval as the start and candidate offer acceptance as the end. Their calendar-day durations are 17, 26, 32, and 45 days. Average time to fill = 120 ÷ 4 = 30.0 calendar days. Open requisitions and later employee start dates are excluded.
Sources
- Society for Human Resource Management — SHRM Human Capital Benchmarking Study: 2009 Executive Summary: Defines time to fill as days from job-requisition opening to candidate offer acceptance, calculated in calendar days including weekends and holidays; supports aggregate durations divided by the same filled-position set.
- American Productivity & Quality Center — 5 Recruiting Metrics Every Organization Should Track: Uses requisition approval to job-offer acceptance and treats recruiting workload metrics as separate KPIs, not parts of time to fill.
- U.S. Office of Personnel Management — Updated Instructions for Reporting Annual Time-to-Hire (T2H): Provides a federal comparison that uses calendar days from Hiring Need Validated Date to tentative-offer acceptance and separately to entrance on duty; it demonstrates the need for precise boundaries.
Questions about this calculation
What is the difference between time to fill and time to hire?
Definitions vary. This calculator uses one documented requisition start event through candidate offer acceptance. Do not substitute employee start date without relabeling the metric.
Why pair time to fill with cost per hire?
A faster process is not always better if it increases agency dependence or weakens selection quality. Looking at both metrics together gives a clearer recruiting-efficiency view.
Read the companion guide
Time to Fill Calculator Guide: How to Interpret Hiring Speed Without Oversimplifying It
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