What time to fill means
Time to fill (وقت شغل الوظيفة) is the number of days between opening a requisition for a role and the day the person appointed to it starts work. It is a duration that describes the vacancy itself from beginning to end, not the length of one of its stages and not the time any single candidate spent in the process.
It is also a figure that invites comparison with numbers it cannot fairly be compared with, because each of its two ends can be placed at more than one point.
Where time to fill starts and where it ends
The start can be the day the job requisition is approved, or the day the advertisement is published. Between the two there can be days spent on financial approval and on writing the job description. Those days count against the organisation, and anyone who starts counting from publication does not see them.
The end can be the day the offer is accepted, or the day the new employee starts work. Time to fill is taken as ending on the start date: it measures how long a single vacancy takes to fill, from the day it is opened until the appointee starts.
A nearer end point, the offer being accepted, is also used. Our explanation of cost per hire uses this end point when separating money from days, and calls that measure time to hire: the days from the vacancy opening to the offer being accepted. Both end points are in use, and the gap between them is not a detail. It is the time between the employee signing and the employee arriving, and in a given appointment it can be longer than any single stage that came before it.
The practical rule follows. A time to fill figure is quoted together with its two end points, and an organisation that moves one of them between two periods has not shortened its hiring. It has shortened what it counts.
Time to fill worked through a complete hiring process
Take a single vacancy whose stages ran as follows. The day counts are assumed in order to show the structure of the calculation:
- From approval of the requisition to publication of the advertisement: 6 days.
- From publication to the close of applications: 14 days.
- Screening and interviews until a candidate is chosen: 21 days.
- From making the offer to its acceptance: 5 days.
- From acceptance to the start date: 30 days.
The total is 76 days. Had the count stopped at acceptance of the offer, the figure would be 46 days, roughly 39% lower. It is the same organisation and the same vacancy, and the department went without an employee for the full 76 days.
The final stage is the one over which the employer has least control, because it can consist of the notice period that the candidate owes their current employer. How long that period is depends on the candidate’s contract, on the documents of their current establishment and on the statutory provisions that apply to them, not on the new organisation’s estimate. The length of a notice period, and the statutory provisions on it, are covered in our guide to the notice period under the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل). Further procedures may be added where the move is from one employer to another, or where the appointment is made from outside the Kingdom, and we do not settle how long those procedures take.
The 30 days in the calculation is an assumed figure, chosen to show that stage’s share of the total. It is not a statutory period, and it is not an estimate of one.
It follows that a plan to shorten time to fill is built on the first four stages. An organisation that works hard to shorten its process and then measures the effect on the total may see little change, because it has improved 46 days and left 30 that it can do little about.
Breaking time to fill down by stage
A total of 76 days does not point to any action. What does is the share each stage takes of it, found by dividing the days in the stage by the total: 6 days for approval and publication, about 8%; 14 for receiving applications, about 18%; 21 for screening and interviews, about 28%; 5 for acceptance, about 7%; and 30 for the period after acceptance, about 39%.
The largest stage the employer can move is screening and interviews. Cutting it from 21 days to 14 brings the total down to 69 days, a reduction of about 9%. That is the realistic size of a large improvement in the stage most open to improvement, and a promise to halve the figure is one that a structure like this one cannot deliver.
Shortening the application stage comes at a price. Closing applications after one week rather than two reduces the number of people who enter selection, which raises the selection ratio and narrows the choice. The days taken out of that stage are taken out of the quality of the decision, not out of the procedure.
We found no measurement on which to base a statement about the effect of shortening time to fill on the quality of hire, and it is not obvious that the relationship between the two runs in one direction.
Why the average time to fill can hide the case that matters
Take seven vacancies closed in one quarter, with these durations in days: 38, 45, 52, 60, 66, 81 and 120. The total is 462, so the average is 462 divided by 7, or 66 days. The median, the middle value when the durations are put in order, is 60 days.
A gap of six days between 66 and 60 comes from a single case that took 120 days. Remove it and the average of the remaining six becomes 342 divided by 6, or 57 days. So the figure put to management moves by nine days when one vacancy out of seven is removed.
A more honest presentation gives the median together with the longest case, because the longest case is the only one that carries information someone can act on: why it took 120 days, and whether the cause lay in the job description, in the pay offered or in a scarcity of people in the profession.
These durations are assumed as well. We found no published reference giving time to fill by profession for the Saudi market, and the time a role takes to fill depends on the profession and on the state of the market for it.
Time to fill counts only the vacancies that were filled
This point can be overlooked. The duration is calculated only for a vacancy that has closed, so open vacancies appear in neither the numerator nor the denominator, and they may be the hardest ones.
Add to the seven above three vacancies that are still open: the first has been open for 95 days, the second for 110 and the third for 140. These three will end with durations no shorter than those figures. Counted at the days elapsed so far, the total becomes 462 plus 345, or 807, over ten vacancies, giving an average of at least 80.7 days.
So the reported figure is 66 and the correct minimum is 80.7, a difference of almost 15 days that arises because the measure sees only what succeeded. The more an organisation struggles with its difficult roles, the better its reported figure can look, because the stalled vacancies stay outside the calculation. That is why time to fill is not examined alone: the number of open vacancies, and how long each has been open, are examined alongside it.
Time to fill for internal appointments
Filling a role with someone already employed by the organisation shortens the final stage of time to fill but does not remove it. An internal candidate owes no notice to another employer, but still has to hand over their current work and wait for someone to take their place. That period is agreed between two managers, and in the sources we reviewed we found no provision setting its length.
More important, closing a vacancy internally opens a second vacancy in the position the employee left. An organisation that measures time to fill on the first vacancy alone records a quick appointment when the move has in fact involved two vacancies: one closed and one newly opened. That is why, for internal mobility, time to fill is measured across the whole chain rather than its first link, that is, until the last vacancy created by the move has been closed.
An internal appointment can, on the other hand, shorten the time spent on sourcing and screening, because the candidate’s performance is known from evidence rather than estimated. The duration is shorter, but the reason is accumulated knowledge rather than a faster procedure. That difference is worth stating when the figure is presented, so that the same speed is not expected of an external appointment.
How time to fill differs from the vacancy rate, candidate time and time to productivity
- The vacancy rate. It is a snapshot taken at a moment, saying how many roles are empty now. Time to fill is a duration that describes one vacancy from beginning to end.
- Candidate time. A different measure runs from a candidate applying to that candidate accepting the offer, so it starts with something the candidate does, not with the vacancy opening. It describes the experience of the person who applied rather than how long the role stood empty, and for that reason, where the candidate applied after the vacancy was opened, it cannot be longer than time to fill measured to the start date.
- Time to productivity. The start date is where time to fill ends and where another measure begins. An employee who has started has closed the vacancy but has not yet filled the gap it left, and the period between their start and their normal level of performance is measured separately and examined alongside employee onboarding.
What distorts a time to fill figure
- Reopening the requisition. A vacancy that was closed and then reopened because the candidate did not start may be counted in some systems as a new requisition, so its duration is split into two short halves and the stall disappears from the figure.
- Opening the requisition before the need arises. An organisation that opens requisitions early as a precaution lengthens its figures without any stall, while one that opens a requisition only after the employee has left shortens them, although it went through the same gap.
- Combining very different professions. A single figure for the whole organisation combines a role filled in three weeks with another not filled in four months, so it describes neither and no decision can rest on it.
- Counting holidays and leave. Calendar days differ from working days, and the difference shows in periods that include public holidays. An organisation that switches between the two methods from one quarter to the next is comparing figures that are not comparable.
Before a time to fill figure is presented
Time to fill is useful when it is presented with three things: its two end points, its median and not its average alone, and the number of vacancies still open. Without the third, the figure improves as the situation worsens, which is the worst quality a measure can have.
The question to put to every figure presented is this: did it improve because we became faster, because the difficult vacancies have not yet closed, or because we changed where we start counting? Three causes produce the same movement, and only one of them deserves to be called an improvement.
In the sources we reviewed, we found no provision requiring an organisation to measure time to fill or setting a limit on its length. So we do not state that the measure is required, or that exceeding a given duration is a violation.
This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.
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