Time to fill is an essential metric for HR professionals to track as they monitor the health of their talent acquisition function.

We define time to fill as the average time it takes to close a given job req, measured in days.  Your metric may be specific to a function (time to fill for Java Engineers in Boston), or for the entire company.

Time To Fill = (Total Number of Days of Opened Jobs / Total Number of Jobs)

How we quantify the impacts

Changes in time to fill can lead to drastic cost savings or lost revenue opportunities.  Think about a sales person that has a $1 million annual quota.  Think about the cost of not having an engineer for 2 weeks and seeing a new product launch slip.

We believe that this is an essential KPI to track.  It’s also one that has a direct ROI (or negative impact on the business) when it changes.  However, this impact can be hard to quantify, and that is why we put together this calculator.

This post was originally published on the NextWave Hire Blog where we write about tips and trends related to employer branding and talent acquisition.