Time to Hire Benchmarks
Time to hire · Global (median)
Definition: Median recorded hiring duration in SmartRecruiters workflow data; exact start/end timestamp pair not verified by HRRef
View candidate hiring time, job-filling time and time spent in each recruitment stage. Check the recorded start and end events against your workflow.
Explore Zoho RecruitBased on official documentation; HRRef has not tested Zoho Recruit. These KPI views do not establish benchmark comparability.
Source and KPI details
Zoho Recruit’s administrator documentation gives status-based formulas for candidate and job time metrics. These are concrete examples to check against your own workflow. It also documents a Time in Stage view for the time a candidate spends in each recruitment stage.
Zoho Recruit KPI documentationCheck the full event definitions and limitations in the measurement guide below. Official documentation checked 2026-10-13.
Enter one elapsed calendar-day duration per completed hire, using the same start and end events for every record. Results describe your inputs; they are not automatically comparable with the published benchmark.
Separate numeric durations with commas or new lines. Zero and decimal days are allowed. Enter durations only, without names or other employee details. Calculation happens in your browser.
SmartRecruiters’ original 2025 report gives a global median of 38 days for its September 2023–August 2024 workflow data. This is a median, not a mean or a universal target. The report notes limitations from how users record workflow steps. HRRef has not verified an exact start/end timestamp pair for this figure.
| Segment | Value | Vintage |
|---|---|---|
| Global (median) | 38 days | sep 2023-aug 2024 (publ. 2025) |
Denominator: Median recorded hiring duration in SmartRecruiters workflow data; exact start/end timestamp pair not verified by HRRef
A KPI name does not tell you which events start and stop its clock. Keep an internal definition alongside every hiring-duration result.
- Choose the events
Write down your start and end event before calculating: a job-level clock and a candidate-level clock answer different questions. Record the actual event dates, not only a field labelled time to hire. An ATS status-update date is not automatically the date an offer was accepted or the employee started. - Fix the cohort
Choose completed hires in a stated reporting period and the same role, location or workforce group. Keep ongoing or cancelled cases separate; they have no completed duration for this calculation. - Use one elapsed-day rule
Calculate elapsed calendar days from the chosen start date/time to the end date/time. Apply the same timezone and date-only or timestamp convention to every record. Keep paused time within that elapsed duration and report pauses separately. - Report median and mean separately
Sort the per-hire durations. The median is the middle duration; for an even number of records, use the mean of the middle pair. The mean is the sum of durations divided by the record count. Always state the sample size; a mean and a median are different summaries. - Check comparability
Match event definitions, cohort, day convention and statistic before making an external comparison. SmartRecruiters reports a global median from its own recorded workflows, with limitations from how users complete those steps. HRRef has not verified an exact timestamp pair for its cited global figure, so the calculator gives no benchmark ranking.
Zoho Recruit: recorded event definitions and source
Zoho Recruit’s administrator documentation gives status-based formulas for candidate and job time metrics. These are concrete examples to check against your own workflow. It also documents a Time in Stage view for the time a candidate spends in each recruitment stage.
| Documented KPI | Clock starts | Clock stops |
|---|---|---|
| Time to Hire | Candidate associated with a job opening | Candidate status changed to Hired |
| Time to Fill | Job opening created | Job opening status changed to Filled |
The article’s descriptive prose discusses identifying a candidate or posting a job through offer acceptance, while its formula sections use the association/creation and Hired/Filled status events above. Use the documented formula events when interpreting these KPIs, then check when your team records those statuses. Neither the labels nor these views establish equivalence to the SmartRecruiters global median.
HRRef is a Zoho affiliate. This link opens official documentation, not an affiliate referral. The notes describe documented measurement behaviour; HRRef has not tested the product.
Read Zoho Recruit’s Recruiting KPIs documentation · checked 2026-10-13.
Official documentation: Manatal ATS pipeline · checked 2026-10-13.