How Long Does the Hiring Process Take?
How long does the hiring process take? A week to several months depending on the role; posting lifespans by board put a ceiling on time to fill.
Dvir Atias
Founder, JobsPipe
How long does the hiring process take? Anywhere from a week to several months, depending on the role, seniority and employer, and there is no single honest average. What public data can measure is how long postings stay open, which puts a ceiling on time to fill for boards where a posting’s removal is detected the day it happens.
How does the hiring process work, and where the time goes
- Requisition approval. Before anything is posted, headcount is requested and approved. Days at a startup, weeks in a large company with budget gates. Invisible from outside.
- Posting and sourcing. The posting goes live and applications arrive, mostly in the first week or two. Recruiters source in parallel for roles that do not draw enough applicants. The posting date is the first public timestamp.
- Screening. Resume review, knockout questions and a recruiter call. This is fast when the queue is small and slow when a popular posting draws hundreds of applications.
- Interviews. One round for hourly roles, three to five for senior and technical ones. Scheduling across interviewers and candidates is where most calendar time goes, and a debrief that ends without a decision restarts the loop.
- Offer, checks and notice. Offer, negotiation, references or background checks, then the candidate’s notice period. Time to fill usually stops at acceptance; time to start adds the notice.
- Close. The requisition is closed and the posting is removed. The span from posting to removal covers steps two through five, which is why posting lifespan is a usable proxy for how long the hiring process takes.
The proxy has one condition: the removal has to be detected when it happens. On Y Combinator, Ashby, Greenhouse, Lever and Paylocity, JobsPipe checks the board feed continuously, so the recorded close is the requisition closing. On LinkedIn and Indeed the close is recorded when the listing reaches its expiry, so their medians sit at the listing window by construction and say little about the employer. Median days live and the share closed within 30 days, by board:
| Board | Median days live | Closed within 30 days | Closure detected |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lever | 8 days | 93.0% | continuous |
| Paylocity | 13 days | 96.5% | continuous |
| Ashby | 14 days | 69.6% | continuous |
| Greenhouse | 14 days | 68.1% | continuous |
| Indeed | 30 days | 51.8% | at expiry |
| 30 days | 51.5% | at expiry | |
| Y Combinator | 33 days | 43.4% | continuous |
The board-by-board treatment, including survival by cohort, is on the job posting lifespan page. Whether a posting is required to stay up for any period is answered in how long does a job posting have to stay up, and pulling the closed set yourself is in find expired job postings.
Where JobsPipe fits
JobsPipe is a jobs data API that collects live postings from LinkedIn, Indeed, Y Combinator, Naukri, Workday, Greenhouse, Workable, SmartRecruiters, Ashby, Lever and Paylocity, returns them as one schema with closure tracking and a ghost score, and includes a free tier of 1,000 jobs a month. Every closed record carries discovered_at and closed_at, so days live is a subtraction, and closed_reason says whether the posting was removed or expired. Filter with status set to closed and source_or to the continuous boards to measure a segment of your own, then add job_title_or or job_seniority_or to see how the ceiling moves with the role.
Measure how fast roles in your segment close - free tier included.
Get a free API key
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the hiring process work?
Headcount is approved, a posting goes live, applications and sourced candidates are screened, shortlisted candidates go through one or more interview rounds, an offer is negotiated and accepted, checks run, and the requisition closes. The posting is public from the second step to the last, so its lifespan brackets most of the process.
Why do LinkedIn and Indeed show a longer median than the ATS boards?
Because of how closure is detected, not because employers there hire slower. On Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever, Y Combinator and Paylocity the board feed is checked continuously, so a close is recorded when the requisition closes. On LinkedIn and Indeed it is recorded at the listing expiry, so the median sits at the listing window by construction.
Is posting lifespan the same as time to fill?
No, it is a ceiling on it. A posting can stay up after an offer is accepted, and some are withdrawn without a hire. On the continuously detected boards the median days live is a fair upper bound for how long a typical search runs; on expiry-detected boards it mostly reflects the listing policy.