Time to fill

Time to fill looks at hiring from the business side. A warehouse that is two pickers short, a cleaning contract without enough staff or a store without weekend cover feels every day of it. Hiring managers and planners use time to fill to see how long those gaps last.

Time to fill starts earlier than time to hire, which starts when a candidate applies. That page compares the two metrics in detail.

How do you measure time to fill?

1. Take the date the vacancy was approved or opened in your applicant tracking system (ATS).
2. Take the date the role was filled: the accepted offer, the signed contract or the first day.
3. Count the days between the two.
4. Report the median per role type and per location.

Time to fill = date the role is filled − date the vacancy opened

Agree on the end point once. Some teams stop the clock at the accepted offer, others at the first working day. Both are fine, as long as every team uses the same one.

For a vacancy with many openings, such as twenty order pickers, measure per opening. The first hire often comes fast while the last few take much longer.

Why do frontline roles stay open?

• Too few suitable applicants. The job ad reaches the wrong people or too few people.
• Slow first contact. Applicants wait days for a call and take another job. See time to first contact.
• Applicants who cannot be reached. Calls during office hours miss candidates who are at work.
• Old candidates left unused. People who applied before are not called again for the new vacancy. See talent pool.
• Slow decisions. Interviews and offers wait for a manager.

The first two reasons cause most of the gap in high-volume roles. See high-volume hiring.

How do you shorten time to fill?

1. Measure each step. Split time to fill into sourcing, first contact, screening, interview and offer. Fix the longest step first.
2. Contact every applicant within minutes. Speed at the start prevents a new search later.
3. Screen everyone the same way. A short, fixed set of questions lets you decide fast. See candidate screening.
4. Book the interview in the same conversation. Every extra message adds a day.
5. Reuse earlier applicants. Contact people from your own database before you pay for new ads.

What does an open role cost the business?

An empty frontline role costs more than recruiting time. Colleagues work overtime, orders ship late, a contract misses its service level or a store closes a checkout. Time to fill turns those costs into one number that managers and recruiters can follow together.

How does Ringtime shorten time to fill?

Ringtime's AI agents run the first conversation with every candidate, by phone and WhatsApp, on top of the ATS you already use.

1. New applicants get a screening within 5 minutes of applying, inside the calling hours you set.
2. Recruiters can add candidates from the ATS to a campaign, one at a time or many at once.
3. The assistant asks your screening questions and books an interview with a recruiter for the candidates who fit.
4. Large lists run in batches inside your outreach hours.
5. Every result lands in your ATS.

To fill frontline roles before the gap hurts, see how Ringtime works for employers.