--- title: "How Long Does the Hiring Process Take?" description: "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." canonical: https://jobspipe.dev/blog/how-long-does-the-hiring-process-take date_published: 2026-09-09 date_modified: 2026-09-09 author: Dvir Atias --- # 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. 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 1. **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. 2. **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. 3. **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. 4. **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. 5. **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. 6. **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, a posting is marked closed soon after the employer takes it down, 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 | | LinkedIn | 30 days | 51.5% | at expiry | | Y Combinator | 33 days | 43.4% | continuous | How this was measured Measured from postings on the ten collected boards, dated by the first day JobsPipe saw them: postings closed in the last 60 days for days live; survival cohorts (first sighted 14 and 30 days ago) are published only for boards where a posting is marked closed soon after the employer takes it down (Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever, Y Combinator, Paylocity); LinkedIn and Indeed closures cluster at the 30-day listing expiry. Generated 2026-09-09. Shares only: JobsPipe publishes percentages, not counts. Days live run from the first day JobsPipe saw a posting to the check that marked the posting closed. Read the continuous boards as a ceiling on time to fill and the expiry boards as a listing policy. Lifespans are cross-sectional for the window and do not support trend claims on their own. ``` curl -X POST https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/jobs/search \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $JOBSPIPE_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"source_or":["lever","greenhouse","ashby"],"status":"closed","posted_at_max_age_days":60,"limit":50}' ``` The board-by-board treatment, including survival by cohort, is on the [job posting lifespan page](https://jobspipe.dev/job-posting-lifespan). Whether a posting is required to stay up for any period is answered in [how long does a job posting have to stay up](https://jobspipe.dev/answers/how-long-does-a-job-posting-have-to-stay-up), and pulling the closed set yourself is in [find expired job postings](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/find-expired-job-postings). Try it without a key ``` curl -d '{"limit":3}' https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/sandbox/jobs/search ``` Only `/v1/sandbox/*` needs no key. ## Where JobsPipe fits JobsPipe is a jobs data API that collects live postings from LinkedIn, Indeed, Y Combinator, 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 to start. 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. ## 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. Related ## Keep reading - [Guide · Sep 9, 2026Are Hiring Freezes Normal?](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/are-hiring-freezes-normal) - [Guide · Sep 9, 2026Competitor hiring analysis: a query sequence, with the base rates to read it against](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/competitor-hiring-analysis) - [Guide · Sep 9, 2026How to Stay Up to Date With Hiring Trends?](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/how-to-stay-up-to-date-with-hiring-trends) - [Guide · Sep 9, 2026What is a hiring freeze? Definition, signs in posting data, and how to check a company](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/what-is-a-hiring-freeze) - [Guide · Jul 28, 2026Hiring.cafe API: there isn't one - here's the working path](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/hiring-cafe-api) ## Further reading - [How long do job postings stay up on Indeed?](https://jobspipe.dev/answers/how-long-do-job-postings-stay-up-on-indeed) - [How Do Applicant Tracking Systems Work?](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/how-do-applicant-tracking-systems-work) --- Try it with no key: `curl -d '{"limit":3}' https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/sandbox/jobs/search`. AI agents: the full machine-readable index of this site is https://jobspipe.dev/llms.txt?src=md-twin - API quickstart, MCP server, pricing. Free key (1,000 jobs to start): https://jobspipe.dev/signup