Human Resource (HR) is a critical business function that recruits and nurtures the most precious resource for the organization – their people. However, very few companies have a strategic view of the critical function of HR. For instance, one of the critical functions of HR is Talent acquisition.
When your company is left with an open position, it is basically understaffed – this means that there may be critical tasks pending, or disrupted work processes which may eventually result in revenue loss. To avoid inadequacy of productivity, open positions have to be filled ASAP. So the first thing that would be racing in your mind is to acquire a world-class talent suitable for that open position.
In order to help the organization evaluate the efficiency of the HR Department towards talent acquisition, metrics have been introduced. With these, you can calculate the average time to fill a job vacancy. It is one of the hiring metrics that indicates recruitment success and so, Measuring it Matters.
The basics of average time to fill a job vacancy
Usually referred to as Time to Fill, this metric shows you how many days it takes for your company to fill in a job opening – from the moment the job advertisement has been posted until the moment the position has been successfully filled in.
Keep in mind that Time to Fill and Time to Hire do not mean the same, time to Fill refers to the time that passes until your HR or Management team has contacted the potential employee. On the other hand, Time to Hire refers to the period between the company’s first contact with a candidate and their hire. The difference may seem trivial to you, but these two metrics give you valuable insight into how efficient these two different processes are. One measures the average time it takes for your company to find someone that can fill the job opening, while the other one measures how fast your HR team is at getting that employee into the office working, after signing the contract.
Formula for calculation of average time to fill a job vacancy
When it comes to calculating the Average Time to Fill, it can be done in two ways, depending on whether you want to find the average time to fill for a certain position or the average time to fill at the company level.
If you want to find the average time taken to fill a certain position, all you have to do is calculate the average of the number of days for which the position was open – namely, from the initial job listing to the initial hire.
If you want to find the average time to fill for your entire company, then you have to track job openings for a certain period of time and then divide the overall number of open days by the total number of job openings in the same time period.
Why is the average time to fill a job vacancy important?
Well, first of all, if it takes a long time for your company to fill in a position, this means that the budget used for cost per hire will increase – as the cost per hire will get higher. So, if you measure the Average Time to Fill a Job Vacancy, you will gain valuable insight in terms of the effectiveness of the recruitment and hiring processes – this will help you optimize the cost it takes for hiring. This Recruitment KPI is important for realistic business planning.
Armed with the insight this KPI provides, you can improve the hiring experience for your team, lead to revenue savings, thereby doing value addition to your organization. Streamline your HR Department administrative tasks with this KPI so that your team can hire the best people, faster at an optimized cost.