Which roles take longest to fill?
№ 219 · Time-to-hire by role
Definition
MetricCalendar days from application or requisition open to accepted offer
UnitCalendar days
Bar of days from req opened to offer accepted per role family. Pull from ATS data. Senior roles always longer; long times for junior roles signal pipeline or employer brand issues. Example: Senior Eng 64 days; Junior Sales 28 days (typical).
- ATS
- Applicant tracking system. The system of record for candidates and hiring stages.
Benchmarks
| Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|
| Over 75 days | 46 days application to accepted offer, 63 days requisition to fill | Under 30 days for business roles |
US and global employers, 2025 hiring data. Time to hire from 6,640 companies on Jobvite, Lever and JazzHR. Time to first fill from 54 million applications and 93,000 jobs on Ashby, January 2021 to March 2026 · Two clocks are in circulation and mixing them is the standard error. Time to hire, measured from application to accepted offer, sits at 46.2 days in the Employ data. Time to fill, measured from requisition open, sits at 63.5 days in the same dataset, down from 67.7 the year before. Ashby measures time to first fill and reports 60 days for business roles against 75 for technical, and 52, 63 and 71 days for junior, mid and senior roles. A third clock starts earlier still, at recruiter outreach for sourced candidates, and is not captured by any of these series. Both major datasets agree that the delay is distributed rather than concentrated: Ashby finds slower companies lose time at review, scheduling, feedback and offer approval simultaneously, with the largest single gap at offer turnaround, 3.26 extra days for business roles and 4.71 for technical.
| Category | Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technical roles | 95 days or more | 75 days to first fill | 45 days to first fill |
| Business roles | 80 days or more | 60 days to first fill | 35 days to first fill |
| Junior roles | 70 days | 52 days | 30 days |
| Senior roles | 95 days | 71 days | 45 days |
When it looks bad
The median across roles looks acceptable while one or two role families sit two to three times longer, and the extra days are concentrated in waiting rather than in evaluation.
Company median of 44 days with engineering at 96 days, of which 21 days sit between final interview and offer issue.
What to do about it
- Automate interview scheduling before adding recruiter capacity. Ashby measures auto-scheduled interviews confirming in a median 3.7 hours against 5 hours manually, 26% faster, and the saving compounds across every stage of a multi-round loop.
- Expand and train the interviewer pool rather than shortening the loop. Ashby identifies schedule lead time, meaning how far out interviews are booked, as the larger of the two scheduling delays, and that is an availability constraint rather than a process one.
- Pre-approve offer bands so offer turnaround stops being an approval queue. The gap between fast and slow companies at this stage is 3.26 days for business roles and 4.71 for technical, which is often the difference between winning and losing a candidate holding two offers.
- Assign a recruiter to the roles that are currently manager-run. Ashby finds time to hire drops from 62 days to 42 at startups under 25 employees when a recruiter is involved, a 30% reduction that is usually cheaper than the vacancy cost it removes.
Sources
- Employ Inc. Time to fill fell from 67.7 days in 2024 to 63.5 days in 2025, while time to hire edged up from 45.7 to 46.2 days. globenewswire.com ↗
- Employ Inc. First-year turnover fell to 12.1% in 2025 from 23.7% in 2024. Time to screen improved across all sizes, with enterprises fastest at 5.7 days and hospitality slowest at 6.5 days. employinc.com ↗
- HR Dive reporting Employ Inc. Applications per job rose to 257.6 from 207.2. Offer acceptance averaged 83.9%, highest in manufacturing at 91% and lowest in software and tech at 80.8%. New hires still employed at three months fell to 84.6% from 93.9%. hrdive.com ↗
- Ashby Median days to first fill: 52 junior, 63 mid-level, 71 senior. Technical roles take a median 75 days versus 60 for business roles. Interview loops run 17.9 days technical versus 14.4 business. Passthrough is 35% at screen and 81% at offer, and referred candidates pass screens at 52%. ashbyhq.com ↗
- Ashby 15 applicants are interviewed per hire, 18 technical and 13 business. Interviewer hours run 21 to 29 per technical hire and 16 to 18 per business hire. At startups under 25 employees, time to hire is 42 days with a recruiter involved versus 62 days without. Offer acceptance sits near 80%. ashbyhq.com ↗
- SHRM Executive hires cost on average nearly seven times more than non-executive hires. Screening and interviewing each average 8 to 9 days inside the process. shrm.org ↗
- Appcast Cost per application and cost per hire both rose sharply in 2025 despite a softer labor market, driven by job board pricing and programmatic media models rather than candidate scarcity. prnewswire.com ↗
- InterviewCost.com reporting SHRM 2025 Benchmarking Report figures SHRM's 2025 Benchmarking Report puts average cost per hire at $5,475 for non-executive roles and $35,879 for executive roles, up from the long-cited $4,700. interviewcost.com ↗