Time-to-fill could be a great way to see where there are issues unnecessarily adding time to the time it takes to fill positions. But the traditional way to calculate time-to-fill misses those issues. So, you may be evaluated on a statistic that does not tell the whole story. 

Unfortunately, time-to-fill usually consists of only two data points only--when the requisition was approved (or something equivalent) and when the position was filled (offer made, or some equivalent). 

There are many reasons this time-to-fill calculation most likely reflects an inaccurate picture of your recruiting.  For example,   

• The requisition was approved and it took several weeks for the recruiter to get critical information from the hiring manager.
• The job posting was basically the dry clinical job description, slowing down candidate flow and certainly not exciting many candidates.
• Qualified candidates were presented, but for whatever reasons, the hiring manager wanted to see more before making a decision.
• There was significant lag time while recruiters were attempting to get feedback and/or decisions from hiring managers. 

In the meantime, time-to-fill is rolling along and adding up. If you are impacted by any of the above, you know you cannot have enough sourcing resources or new sourcing techniques to make up for the delays caused by these situations. 

But when you as the recruiter start to track these key items on some of your openings, you and your manager will have a very different discussion. 

Again, as I’ve probably stated until you’re tired of hearing it, this isn’t to throw hiring managers under the bus. It’s not blaming hiring managers and then doing nothing to change the situation.  It’s to throw some light on the issues that are lurking in time-to-fill so we can get them changed.  

I've shared some simple techniques to speed up the time-to-fill on your searches. They are on: http://TamingTheWildHiringManager  Just click on Blog at the top of the page.

Please leave a comment below and let me know the biggest issue lurking in your time-to-fill statistics. Let's talk about some things that can help get your time-to-fill back to the real number.