Time-to-hire is how much time that passes between when a job candidate enters your hiring process and when they accept the employment offer.

Day Accepted – Day Applied = Time-to-Hire. 

Time to hire is calculated by Day Accepted minus Day Applied. So, you post a job on Day 1, your best candidate accepted on Day 30 and they applied on Day 15, you would calculate Time-to-Hire by 30 – 15 = 15. Total all the Time-to-Hire calculations and divide by the number of positions to find the average for your organization.

Quality applicants just aren’t on the market that long. As a result, reducing your time-to-hire is one of the major opportunities employers have to improve their hiring rates.

Here are three tips for reducing your time-to-hire:

1. Get more applicants: Is your application process too arduous? If you’re asking applicants to fill out a ton of information for your initial screening, they’re passing your listings up for other open positions. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’re screening out less-than-capable workers – it’s simply that applicants have far more leverage in the process than they used to. Many of them are applying for multiple jobs at once from their smartphones, and a simpler process will benefit your organization.
2. Bring the recruitment process online: Using an online applicant tracking system will optimize communication between decision-makers as well as providing a tracking solution for to determine where candidates are in the hiring stage. In many organizations, there are a lot of bottlenecks that occur throughout this process, and using an online HR solution with an applicant tracking function will streamline these challenges. 
3. Respond faster: It sounds simple – but one of the best things you can do to reduce your time-to-hire is to just respond more quickly to applicants. It can be easy to let resumes linger in your inbox for a day or two – or even a week or more! But this is exactly what you want to avoid if you’re trying to reduce your time to hire. Set a goal of responding within 24 hours, and watch the number of candidates you’re able to bring in for an interview rise.