Time to fill decoded: How recruiters close key roles faster

Recruiters are under constant pressure to fill roles quickly without sacrificing quality. Long hiring cycles frustrate candidates, create gaps in team performance, and slow down business growth. 

That’s why time to fill has become one of the most important metrics for talent teams to track.

For CEOs and executives, this is more than just an HR metric. A consistently high time to fill can signal deeper problems in recruiting efficiency, alignment with hiring managers, or the ability to attract top talent. A consistently low time to fill, on the other hand, shows that recruiting is operating as a business enabler, not a bottleneck.

In this guide, we’ll unpack what time to fill means, how it differs from other hiring metrics, what slows most teams down, and what recruiters can do to improve it.

What is time to fill?

Time to fill is the number of days it takes to close an open role, measured from the moment a job requisition is approved until a candidate accepts an offer. It’s a holistic measure that includes sourcing, screening, interviewing, and decision-making.

It’s one of the most widely used metrics for evaluating the health of a recruiting process.

For example: if a requisition is approved on March 1, and the candidate accepts an offer on April 1, the time to fill is 31 days. If you add up the total days it takes to fill all open roles and divide by the number of roles filled, you get your average time to fill.

Tracking this consistently helps recruiters benchmark their performance, identify bottlenecks, and demonstrate to executives how effectively the hiring team is delivering on business needs.

Time to fill vs. time to hire

Although they sound similar, time to fill and time to hire measure different parts of the recruiting process. Understanding the distinction helps you analyze where delays happen and how to improve efficiency.

• Time to fill: The number of days between a job requisition being approved and a candidate accepting an offer. Captures the full cycle of sourcing, interviewing, and decision-making, and is often the one executives look at to judge recruiting effectiveness.
• Time to hire: The number of days between when a candidate enters the pipeline (for example, submits an application or is sourced) and when they accept an offer. This focuses more narrowly on the candidate’s journey through your process.

Here’s a simple example:

• A job requisition is approved on January 1
• A candidate applies on January 15
• That candidate accepts an offer on February 15

In this case:

• Time to fill = 45 days (Jan 1 to Feb 15)
• Time to hire = 31 days (Jan 15 to Feb 15)

Both metrics matter. Time to hire helps recruiters see how efficiently candidates move through the funnel, while time to fill provides the bigger-picture view of how fast the company can respond to talent needs.

How to measure average time to fill

Measuring your average time to fill is also quite straightforward, but powerful. The simple formula is:

Time to fill = Total number of days to fill positions ÷ Total number of roles filled

For example, if your team fills 10 roles over a 300-day period, your average time to fill would be 30 days. This gives you a clear benchmark to understand how quickly your hiring process moves and where it could improve.

Consistently measuring time to fill is critical. It lets you benchmark your team’s performance, identify bottlenecks, and evaluate whether process improvements are actually making hiring faster. Without consistent measurement, slowdowns in your hiring process can go unnoticed, costing your organization both time and talent.

Most good ATS platforms automatically calculate time to fill for each role, making it easy to spot trends over time.

Negative influences on time to fill

If your fill time for key roles is too long, it’s usually for one of several common. These generally include:

• Unclear job descriptions: If roles aren’t defined clearly, you attract the wrong candidates, which slows down candidate sourcing and screening.
• Weak intake processes: Misalignment between recruiters and hiring managers can create confusion about priorities, requirements, and timelines.
• Inefficient sourcing: Spending too long finding candidates, or relying on channels that don’t yield quality applicants, can drastically extend time to fill.
• Scheduling delays: Back-and-forth in booking interviews or debrief meetings can stall progress. (Not to mention frustrate candidates, hiring managers, and everyone else involved.)
• Inconsistent evaluations: Subjective feedback or unstructured interview rubrics make it harder to reach timely decisions.
• Slow decision-making at the offer stage: Negotiation delays, internal approvals, or prolonged back-and-forth with candidates can add days or weeks to your process.

Understanding these roadblocks is the first step to speeding up hiring, improving candidate experience, and reducing the overall time to fill.

Five key ways to reduce your time to fill

The overall answer to improving this metric is to create smooth, efficient recruitment processes. That can take on many forms, but here are five smart choices to make right away. 

1. Bring structure to intake meetings

Starting the hiring process with a structured intake call ensures everyone is aligned from day one. By clearly defining the role, responsibilities, and success metrics, recruiters and hiring managers can avoid misunderstandings that often cause delays. 

These meetings also help prioritize must-haves versus nice-to-have skills, which then makes screening candidates more precise and focused. Discussing timelines, interview panel membership, and decision-making protocols upfront prevents bottlenecks later. 

The result is a smoother, faster process with fewer last-minute changes and more qualified candidates.

2. Use AI sourcing tools

AI-powered sourcing tools dramatically speed up your search for top candidates. These platforms scan resumes, social profiles, and talent databases, highlighting individuals who match your criteria more accurately and faster than manual searches. 

Metaview, for example, takes your agreed-upon priorities from the intake calls above and immediately fills your pipeline with strong matches. Without you even asking.

By automatically ranking and recommending candidates, AI reduces the time recruiters spend on low-value tasks. It also helps maintain a steady pipeline, preventing gaps that stall hiring. 

Leveraging AI ensures your team reaches high-quality candidates quickly, and reduces your overall time to fill.

3. Implement structured rubrics and scorecards

Structured interview rubrics standardize candidate evaluation and remove subjective bias. By defining specific criteria and scoring guidelines, interviewers can make faster, more consistent decisions. 

This reduces back-and-forth discussions and ensures all candidates are measured fairly. Rubrics also make it easier to compare applicants across multiple interviews and panels. 

Over time, they help teams identify patterns in what predicts success, improving hiring efficiency and quality simultaneously.

4. Automate scheduling and feedback collection

Manual call scheduling is one of the biggest hidden time-wasters in hiring. Automating calendar coordination, interview confirmations, and follow-up reminders can save days per role. 

Likewise, collecting feedback through automated interview notes ensures hiring managers submit evaluations promptly. This reduces delays between interviews, and brings everyone to the decision stage faster. 

When recruiters and managers can focus on evaluating talent rather than coordinating and notetaking, the entire process moves faster and more smoothly.

5. Close the loop with faster reporting

Regular, real-time reporting keeps stakeholders informed and decisions moving. Dashboards and analytics tools provide visibility into pipeline status, time to fill, and process bottlenecks. 

By quickly spotting delays, hiring teams can intervene before minor issues turn into major roadblocks. Faster reporting also encourages accountability among hiring managers and recruiters, creating a culture of timely action. 

Ultimately, consistent data-driven insights allow your team to continuously optimize hiring and shorten the time to fill.

How Metaview reduces your average time to fill

Metaview is the top AI-powered recruiting platform that transforms every stage of the hiring process, from initial role planning to the final decision. By automating administrative tasks and providing intelligent insights, Metaview eliminates the bottlenecks that stretch time to fill in high-volume hiring environments. 

Whether you're an in-house recruiting team managing dozens of open roles, or a talent agency juggling multiple clients, Metaview keeps candidates moving through your pipeline faster, without sacrificing quality. 

The platform integrates seamlessly with your existing workflow, turning time-intensive manual processes into automated, data-driven operations.

Key benefits:

• Create job descriptions and interview questions in seconds: Skip the lengthy back-and-forth with hiring managers. Metaview's (free) Hiring Studio generates comprehensive job descriptions and structured interview questions tailored to your specific role requirements, getting positions live and interviews scheduled faster.
• Source candidates immediately from a single intake call: Transform your intake conversations into instant sourcing strategies. Metaview analyzes hiring manager requirements and automatically suggests ideal candidate profiles, eliminating the delay between role definition and active recruiting.
• Automate interview notetaking: Replace hours of manual note-taking and transcription with real-time AI summaries. Recruiters can focus entirely on candidate evaluation while Metaview captures every detail. Get searchable, structured notes that are ready for immediate review and sharing.
• Collect and share feedback between the recruiting team near-instantly: End the days-long feedback cycles that kill momentum. Metaview generates structured interview summaries within minutes. Hiring teams can review candidate performance and make go/no-go decisions while the interview is still fresh in everyone's mind.
• Calibrate interviewers and align on what you're looking for: Ensure consistent evaluation standards across all interviewers through AI-powered calibration insights. Metaview identifies when interviewers are misaligned on criteria or expectations, helping teams maintain quality standards while moving at speed.
• Make fast, informed final decisions: Get comprehensive candidate insights that highlight strengths, concerns, and patterns across all interviews. Metaview's analytics help hiring managers cut through subjective impressions to make data-driven decisions, reducing deliberation time from days to hours.

Sign top-quality talent faster

Time to fill is a critical lever for recruiter productivity and business growth. With structured intake meetings, automated feedback, and AI-powered sourcing, you can reduce hiring time without compromising quality. 

Metaview makes it possible to run structured, consistent, and efficient hiring processes at scale, ensuring your team spends less time on admin and more time on strategic decisions. 

Start closing roles faster and attract top talent with confidence. Try Metaview for free and experience the difference in your hiring process.