Introduction

When companies evaluate their recruitment performance, cost-per-hire is often one of the first numbers they look at. How much did it cost to advertise the vacancy? Did we use an external recruitment agency? How much time did the HR team spend? Could the position have been filled more cheaply?

Cost matters, but it does not tell the complete story.

In today's competitive talent market, time is becoming just as valuable as money. A position that remains vacant for weeks can affect productivity, increase pressure on existing employees, delay projects and, in some cases, result in the loss of a highly qualified candidate to a competitor.

According to SHRM's 2025 Recruiting Benchmarking report, the average time to fill both executive and nonexecutive positions was approximately 1.5 months. LinkedIn has reported an average hiring timeline of around 66 days, highlighting just how long organizations can take to convert a vacancy into a new employee.

This raises an important question for employers:

Is saving money on recruitment really a saving if it takes twice as long to hire?

The Real Cost of a Vacancy

The cost of recruitment is relatively easy to calculate.

The cost of leaving a position vacant is much harder.

Imagine a company is hiring a Project Manager for a major project. The organization may spend $5,000 on recruitment and consider that the cost of hiring.

But what happens if the position remains vacant for another six weeks?

Existing managers may have to take on additional responsibilities. Decisions may be delayed. Project activities may slow down. Employees may work longer hours. Client commitments could be affected.

The actual cost of the vacancy may therefore be significantly higher than the recruitment cost itself.

This is why companies need to look beyond:

"How much does it cost to hire?"

and start asking:

"How much is this vacancy costing us every week?"

The Best Candidates Are Often the Hardest to Keep Waiting

Time-to-hire matters because strong candidates rarely remain available indefinitely.

Experienced professionals are often considering multiple opportunities at the same time. This is particularly true for candidates with specialist technical skills, leadership experience or experience in high-demand industries.

A company may identify an excellent candidate on Monday.

By the time the first interview happens two weeks later, that candidate may already have another offer.

By the time the company completes its internal approvals, the candidate may have accepted it.

The employer may then have to restart the entire recruitment process.

In this situation, the company has not necessarily lost the candidate because its salary was too low.

It may have lost the candidate because the hiring process was too slow.

Recruitment Speed Also Affects Candidate Experience

The recruitment process is often a candidate's first meaningful interaction with a company.

A slow process can create a negative impression.

Candidates may begin to question:

• How quickly does this company make decisions?
• Will internal processes always take this long?
• Will communication be difficult?
• Is the company genuinely interested in hiring me?

According to iCIMS' 2024 Talent Experience research, around 70% of job seekers expected the process from application to offer to take three weeks or less.

The same research found that 51% of people said they would be less likely to purchase from a brand following a negative application or interview experience.

This shows that recruitment is no longer just an HR transaction.

It can influence how people perceive the entire organization.

Time-to-Hire Is Particularly Important for Critical Roles

Not every vacancy has the same impact on a business.

If an organization is hiring for a non-critical support role, taking an additional week may not create a major problem.

But consider a vacancy for:

• Project Director
• Sales Director
• Senior Engineer
• Commercial Manager
• Technology Lead
• HSE Manager
• Healthcare Specialist

These positions can directly influence revenue, project delivery, compliance, productivity or business growth.

For such roles, every additional week without the right person can have a measurable business impact.

This is why organizations should prioritize critical vacancies based on business impact, rather than applying the same recruitment timeline to every position.

Why Companies Often Hire Slowly

The problem is not always a lack of candidates.

In many organizations, delays happen internally.

A typical process may involve:

Vacancy approval → Job description → Sourcing → Shortlisting → Interview → Second interview → Hiring manager approval → HR approval → Offer → Acceptance

If each stage takes several days, the overall process can quickly become six or eight weeks.

Common causes include:

• Unclear job requirements
• Too many interview rounds
• Slow CV feedback
• Limited hiring-manager availability
• Delayed salary approvals
• Multiple levels of internal approval
• Poor communication with candidates

The good news is that many of these delays can be reduced without compromising hiring quality.

Speed Does Not Mean Compromising Quality

There is a common misconception that faster hiring means lowering recruitment standards.

It doesn't.

The objective is not to hire the first available candidate.

The objective is to remove unnecessary delays from the hiring process.

Companies can achieve this by:

• Clearly defining requirements before starting the search
• Agreeing on the decision-makers in advance
• Scheduling interviews quickly
• Using structured interview processes
• Limiting unnecessary interview rounds
• Providing feedback within defined timelines
• Pre-approving salary ranges
• Maintaining talent pipelines for recurring positions

A well-designed hiring process can be both fast and thorough.

Cost-per-Hire Still Matters

This does not mean cost-per-hire should be ignored.

Companies need to understand their recruitment expenditure and ensure they are getting value from their hiring channels.

However, cost should be considered alongside other metrics such as:

• Time-to-hire
• Time-to-fill
• Quality of hire
• Offer acceptance rate
• Candidate experience
• Employee retention
• Productivity after hiring

For example, a company might spend less on recruitment but take 60 days to fill a role.

Another company might spend more but fill the same position within 20 days.

If the second company gets the right person into the role faster and avoids the cost of a prolonged vacancy, its recruitment strategy may actually deliver greater value.

The Role of Recruitment Technology

Technology is also changing how quickly companies can recruit.

AI-powered recruitment tools can help organizations automate parts of the process, including candidate sourcing, CV screening, matching, scheduling and communication.

LinkedIn's 2025 Future of Recruiting research found that 37% of organizations were actively integrating or experimenting with generative AI, up from 27% the previous year. Talent acquisition professionals already using generative AI reported saving approximately 20% of their working week, on average.

However, technology alone cannot solve slow hiring.

If candidates are identified quickly but hiring managers take two weeks to provide feedback, the bottleneck remains.

The biggest improvements often come from combining technology, recruitment expertise and faster decision-making.

What Should Companies Measure?

Instead of asking HR teams to focus on cost alone, organizations should create a more balanced recruitment dashboard.

For example:

This gives leadership a much clearer picture of recruitment performance.

A recruitment process should not be considered successful simply because it was inexpensive.

It should be considered successful when it delivers the right person, at the right time, at a sustainable cost.

Conclusion

Cost-per-hire will always be an important recruitment metric.

But in a competitive talent market, time-to-hire deserves equal—and in some cases greater—attention.

A company can save money by using cheaper recruitment channels, but if the position remains vacant for another month, that saving may quickly disappear through lost productivity, delayed projects, additional workload and missed opportunities.

The best candidates are also unlikely to wait indefinitely while companies make decisions.

For businesses, the objective should therefore not be simply to hire cheaply.

It should be to hire efficiently.

That means finding the right balance between cost, speed and quality.

Ultimately, the question HR leaders should be asking is not:

"How much did it cost us to hire?"

It should be:

"How quickly did we turn a business need into the right hire—and what value did that hire create?"

In today's market, time-to-hire is not just a recruitment metric. It is a measure of how quickly a business can respond to opportunity.