Time to fill
Time to fill is the number of days from a role being opened to a candidate being placed in it. For an agency it measures how fast the desk delivers against a brief, and it is often reported alongside time to hire, which starts the clock later, at the first candidate submission.
Definitions vary, so the first job is to agree one. Some agencies start the clock when the brief is taken, others when the role is logged; some stop it at offer acceptance, others at placement or start date. The choice matters less than applying it consistently, because the number is only useful as a comparison: this client against that one, this quarter against the last, perm against contract.
The two measures answer different questions. Time to fill includes the agency's search, so a long number can mean a hard market or slow sourcing. Time to hire starts at the first submission, so it mostly measures the client's process: how long they take to review CVs, arrange interviews and make offers. A desk with a short time to hire and a long time to fill has a sourcing problem. The reverse points at the client.
A worked example. A role is opened on 1 March, the first CV goes to the client on 8 March, and the placement is made on 12 April. Time to fill is 42 days, time to hire 35. If the same client's roles typically take 60 days to fill, most of it in their interview process, that is the conversation to have at the next account review, backed by the numbers.
Time to fill is best read alongside the stages inside it. Days from brief to first submission, from submission to first interview, and from final interview to offer each point at a different owner. A client whose interview-to-offer stage runs to three weeks is losing candidates to faster employers, and showing them that number, with examples, is one of the few ways an agency can change a client's process.
Where it goes wrong: medians reported from three placements; averages dragged out by one role left open for nine months; and time to fill quoted to clients as a promise when half of it sits in their own diary.
How Vayora handles it
Reporting shows time to fill, measured from the role being created to the placement, and time to hire, from the first submission to the placement, each as a median with the 25th and 75th percentiles and the number of placements behind it, so a figure built on three placements says so. Time to fill is also broken down by role, and each client's health card shows its average time to fill. Where there are not enough placements linked to dated roles, the panel says there is not enough data rather than showing a number it cannot stand behind.
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