9 Effective Ways To Reduce Time To Hire in 2026

Slow hiring isn't just a recruiting issue—it's a business problem.

For every extra day, a key role remains unfilled; your company risks losing top candidates to competitors and thousands of dollars in revenue. A Glassdoor report shows that 52% of companies lose top talent to faster-moving competitors. 

The impact goes beyond losing great hires. Slow hiring also damages employer brand perception and reduces productivity. 

What makes this situation worse is the latest research surfacing the widening gap between 'easy-to-fill' and 'hard-to-fill' roles, hinting towards the growing difficulty in hiring. 

In short, optimizing your hiring process is no longer optional—it’s essential. 

But how do you hire faster without compromising quality? By tracking and optimizing time-to-hire metrics and using AI and automation to eliminate inefficiencies. 

This article breaks down why tracking time-to-hire matters and shares 11 proven strategies to speed up recruitment—without sacrificing quality.

How to reduce time to hire: 9 effective tips 

As Jim Sykes, Global Managing Director of Client Operations at AMS, said:

"Time to hire has risen consistently for the last four years. Make no mistake, the hiring market is not going to get easier any time soon. HR and Talent leaders will need to continue to innovate and transform their strategies for acquiring, developing, and retaining talent."

Learn ahead nine such hiring strategies to optimize your hiring process and reduce time to hire.

1. Implement an efficient Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

One of the major hiring challenges that leads to extended time to hire is a broken hiring process. Some of the challenges that come with it are:

• Delays in reviewing applications
• Wasting time coordinating interview schedules
• A complicated process for sending or signing offers

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) automates these hiring stages, which helps you reduce time-to-hire by 42–60% without much effort. 

Understand the difference: the initial screening takes from 1 to 2 weeks for recruiters, but with an ATS using AI, this can be significantly reduced to less than 24 hours. 

For more contextual decisions, even adding human oversight still works better than manual screening, as it only increases your screening time by a couple of more days after AI screening. 

RemotelyHR hires 66% faster with an all-in-one ATS, Kula. Instead of spending days screening 100+ irrelevant applications, they used Kula's features, such as AI scoring, automated job posting, and AI-generated interview notes, to reduce back-and-forth delays. As a result, what previously took around three weeks could be completed in under a week for some roles.

Key benefits of an ATS include:

• Saves time by automating manual tasks like resume sorting and candidate screening

• Improves hiring structure by organizing screening, interviews, and offer management. 

• Enhances collaboration with automated communication between hiring managers, teams, and candidates.

• Provides accurate data and insights to track time to hire and identify areas for improvement

2. Add pre-employment assessments

Pre-employment assessments (also known as pre-hire assessments) are a set of questions or assignments that must be completed as part of the candidate's job application.

Currently, 54% of organizations use pre-employment assessments, and 21% plan to expand their use within the next five years. The reason? They help:

• Identify candidates with the right skills for the role
• Save interview time by focusing on qualified candidates
• Provide data-driven insights for a fair and objective hiring process

One recruiter on Reddit specifically pointed out how including a pre-assessment helps kill 70% of the irrelevant candidates:

A relevant pre-assessment task improves the quality of shortlisted candidates, so less time is spent on the interview stage. It helps reduce hiring time by 74%, from 24-30 days to just 5-10 days. 

To implement pre-employment assessments in hiring:

• Adopt a progressive screening approach. Start with automated knockout questions, followed by asynchronous video interviews, and then cognitive or skills-based assessments to filter candidates without consuming recruiter hours

• Choose assessments that directly align with the required skills and competencies outlined in the job description

• Communicate to candidates the purpose and format of the evaluation so they can adequately prepare

• Set a realistic timeframe for completing the assessment to avoid discouraging qualified applicants

• Most importantly, keep the assessment relevant and concise

Although pre-employment assessments can increase the quality of hires, they can also be a barrier to candidates applying. 

To prevent this, make sure to:

• Create a short test
• Present it in a brand-aligned look to increase employer branding 
• The test should be relevant to the industry 

Here’s a quick, industry-wise listicle of pre-assessment tasks mapped to real job relevance:

• Tech / IT: Coding challenges, debugging tasks, system design problems, and real-world project simulations
• Marketing & Content: Writing samples, campaign strategy tasks, SEO audits, and ad copy creation
• Sales: Role-play scenarios, objection handling exercises, pitch presentations, and CRM-based tasks
• Customer Support: Mock customer queries, email/chat response tests, conflict resolution scenarios
• Finance & Accounting: Financial modeling tasks, data interpretation, Excel-based case studies, compliance scenarios
• Human Resources (HR): Resume screening exercises, interview simulations, policy-based scenarios, candidate evaluation tasks
• Operations & Logistics: Case studies on process optimization, supply chain scenarios, decision-making exercises
• Healthcare: Clinical case evaluations, diagnostic reasoning tests, situational judgment scenarios

3. Optimize job descriptions

If you are not receiving relevant candidates' applications for your job openings, your next quick action should be to optimize your job descriptions. 

Well-defined job descriptions resonate with top candidates and allow them to submit resumes and CVs tailored to expectations. This makes the initial screening process more manageable, as recruiters can quickly identify those without experience. 

Also, it showcases your company culture and unique selling points that can attract top talent. 

To optimize job descriptions:

• Use clear industry-standard titles and avoid internal jargon that might confuse job seekers. 
• Concise introduction to the role, its purpose, and how it fits within the company
• List position duties and responsibilities by using strong action verbs like "designs," "manages," and "analyzes."
• Be specific about day-to-day activities 
• Avoid excessive role requirements, focus on must-have skills
• Specify work environment and location, and clarify if the role is hybrid, on-site, or remote.
• Remove gender-charged words 
• Align JD with actual day-to-day work, not idealized expectations 
• Include salary range and benefits
• Perform A/B testing to find the most effective wording and structure

How to Make Your JD Actually Work

• Write to your ideal candidate
• Use a conversational tone
• Keep descriptions in bullet points with clear headings
• Avoid internal acronyms or uncommon terms
• Keep it thorough but not overkill (nobody wants to read a book)

With Generative AI, you do not need to invest more time in creating the right job description. Use it to generate career sites and job descriptions and reduce time to hire.

When paired with modern time tracking software, it also helps HR teams streamline attendance, productivity insights, and overall workforce management. 

‍11% of talent acquisition pros are already using GenAI for different hiring stages and are experiencing benefits such as:

Some ATS tools (for example, Kula) support GenAI and allow you to create job applications and descriptions in minutes.

4. Leverage employee referrals

Employee referrals are a valuable source of qualified candidates and can reduce time-to-hire as much as 31%, or 13 days, and save an average of $1,000 in hiring costs.

The reasons they help reduce the time include:

• Your employees understand your company culture and the ideal candidate profile. They're more likely to refer individuals who fit the role and your organization well

• Studies show that referred candidates tend to be of higher quality and perform better on the job
• 77% of HR professionals experience trouble in bringing in applicants for full-time roles, which can lengthen the hiring process 

• Existing relationships with employee referrals can expedite the interview process and lead to faster hiring decisions
  

Also, a fun fact about employee referrals is that 88% of employers accepted employee referrals are their candidate source with the highest ROI. Patrick clearly agrees:

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That said, 71% of U.S. companies have a referral program, but due to its lack of structure, only 4% successfully hire 30% of their employees through it.

Here is how to do it right:

• Offer rewards for successful referrals, such as bonuses or recognition programs
• Display your employer brand in outreaches
• Simplify the referral process with easy-to-use tools or an internal portal
• Regularly update employees about open positions and referral program benefits
• Track referral success rates to optimize the program and encourage participation
• Use the ATS tool for easy referral submission and tracking

5. Conduct structured interviews

The interview stage involves the maximum assessment steps and coordination among key stakeholders. So more chances of hiring delays. 

Structuring interviews are for four major parts:

• Deciding interview rounds
• Scheduling interviews
• Including stakeholders for evaluation
• Sending timely feedbacks to candidates

Structuring the whole interview process gives you faster and more efficient hiring as it: 

• Reduces bias by ensuring all candidates are evaluated using the same criteria
• Make it easier to assess and compare candidates efficiently
• Gives candidates a clear understanding of the process and what to expect 

Here is how to achieve a structured interview process:

• Create a set of pre-determined questions for each interview stage
• Create a set pattern of feedback collection from different key stakeholders
• Set strict SLAs for each stage, e.g., phone screen within 2 days, assessment within 3 days, and final decision within 24 hours.
• Establish active communication between candidates and hiring managers 
• Set a clear interview timeline to avoid delays and inform candidates about each stage
• Replace long, sequential interviews with panel interviews to combine stages and reduce scheduling delays
• Use a scorecard or rating system to assess each candidate’s responses and qualifications objectively
• Use ATS with the interview intelligence kit with AI for automated summaries, scheduling, and feedback. 

6. Offer competitive compensation packages 

In the 2023 LinkedIn Learning Workplace Learning Report, the top factor employees consider when choosing a new job is compensation & benefits.

A combination of a great salary, benefits, and incentives attracts top talent faster and helps reduce time to hire. 

An effective offer management (deciding compensation packages, writing offer letters, and handling negotiations) reduces time-to-hire by 40%, that itself says how companies should handle the entire offer management process with due diligence. 

To decide the best benefits and salary packages to employees, make sure to:

• Conduct market research to determine competitive salary ranges and benefits packages for each position
• Create compensation packages to meet the unique needs and preferences of your target candidates, taking into account factors such as experience, skills, and market trends

Don’t just stop at deciding competitive packages, make sure to 

• Communicate it clearly in the JD
• Highlight base salary, bonuses, and commission opportunities 
• Secure internal approvals from HR representatives, department heads, and senior leadership
• Extend the offer by phone rather than by email to  clear any questions in real-time 
• Prepare an alternative beforehand to handle negotiations
• Initiating a smooth transition to onboarding. 

For speed:

• Use pre-approved offer templates for speed
• Automating offer letters with offer management software
• Real-time collaboration between HR and hiring managers
• Tracking offer status with offer management systems

7. Build a future-proof talent pipeline

Building a talent pipeline helps reduce the hiring process from 170 days to just 60 days. 

The reason why for 48% of organizations are building a talent pipeline is that it is their top priority. This keeps them connected with potential hires, helping them hire faster for future needs in less time.

But there is a difference between a building talent pipeline and a strategic talent pipeline, and only the latter will reduce your hiring time significantly. 

For strategic pipeline building:

• Think of future challenges your company is expected to face in the coming year, for skills gap analysis between current capabilities and future skill requirements
• Map out a success profile that highlights key behaviors, motivations, and company values beyond responsibilities 
• Organize the pipeline into categories like 'ready now,' 'ready in 6-12 months,' or 'high potential. 
• Use several sourcing channels (networking events, social media, or other recruitment channels) and place your strongest bet on the best-performing sources for you. 
• Consistently keep candidates engaged with online events and with casual mobile-friendly check-ins
• Build referral ecosystems to connect with top candidates
• Use AI and automation to identify and engage with the right employees easily

8. Implement a collaborative hiring process

A hiring is not just an HR or recruiter’s job, it requires involvement from other stakeholders, such as department heads and senior leadership.

It helps you understand the why behind the role: what success looks like, which soft skills matter, what technical skills are non-negotiable, and which ones are just nice to have.

Jennifer Walter, Corporate Talent Acquisition Manager, adds: 

The best hiring experiences come from collaboration—from building a clear process to refining who we’re actually looking for. What might have worked in the past, and what didn't. What do we need now for where we want to go in the future?

Team active involvement is also important in active hiring for faster and more effective decision-making. 

A collaborative hiring process adds depth to your hiring process, but if done manually, it can increase the hiring time rather than reduce it.

Instead, use an ATS tool that allows organizations to create automated workflows. 

With these automated workflows, companies can easily automate communication, collect stakeholder feedback, and track hiring updates.

9. Provide timely feedback to candidates

Good timely feedback happens in less than 48 hours. 

Renae Fazakerley, Civil Engineering Recruitment Partner, mentions the following:

The candidate loses momentum. They begin to wonder if the company’s really interested. Their excitement fades, confidence drops, and they start to rationalize staying where they are; or worse, they start taking calls from other recruiters or start "having a look" on Seek or LinkedIn.

It can make you lose candidates who were interested in your role and upset top candidates easily, as they do not appreciate not being valued. 

Not a good approach if you are looking to secure a candidate sooner. 

Timely feedback not only speeds up the hiring process and secures candidates faster, but also creates less friction in dealing with them. Look what Catherine has to say about her experience:

Sending contextual and relevant feedback manually to each candidate is time-consuming, whic we are clearly trying to save. 

Use an ATS with an automated communication feature, which allows recruiters to use templates or AI to write feedback and send it out automatically without any delay. 

Why Your Hiring Metrics Aren’t Helping You Make Better Decisions

1. Benchmark Your Hiring Performance Before Trying to Fix It

One of the most common mistakes is assuming your hiring is slow without knowing what “normal” looks like as per your industry. For example:

• IT roles average around 41 days
• Professional services roles take about 47 days
• Investment banking roles can range from 21 to 60+ days
• Engineering roles take around 62 days
• Energy and defense roles can extend up to 67 days

It also explains why applying a single benchmark across all roles leads to poor decisions. A 45-day hiring cycle may indicate inefficiency in one industry but could be completely normal for another industry.

For hiring managers and TA leaders, this means:

• You should evaluate hiring speed relative to industry and role type, not in isolation
• Faster is not always better—fit and quality often require longer cycles in complex roles
• Benchmarks should guide expectations, not pressure teams into unrealistic timelines

2. Diagnose Where Your Hiring Process Is Breaking Down

When hiring slows down, most teams try to fix everything at once. But hiring is not a single process, it’s a series of stages, and delays usually occur in very specific parts of that journey.

This is why separating metrics like time to fill and time to hire becomes critical. 

Time to fill captures the entire process from job approval to offer acceptance, while time to hire focuses specifically on what happens after a candidate enters the pipeline. 

This distinction helps you identify the real bottleneck

If Time to Fill is high, the issue is likely:

• Poor sourcing channels
• Low-quality applicants
• Weak job positioning

If Time to Hire is high, the problem is internal:

• Too many interview rounds
• Delayed feedback from stakeholders
• Scheduling inefficiencies

This level of diagnosis changes how teams operate. Instead of broadly trying to “speed up hiring,” you can identify exactly which stage needs improvement and assign clear ownership to fix it. It turns hiring from a vague challenge into a structured problem-solving exercise. 

3. Measure Your Metrics the Right Way

Even when teams track the right metrics, they can calculate those metrics in ways that lead to misleading conclusions. 

Hiring data is rarely clean or evenly distributed. 

A single hard-to-fill role, such as a senior leadership position, can significantly increase your average time to hire. Similarly, different departments or job types often follow completely different hiring timelines.

Relying only on averages in such cases creates a distorted view of performance. This is why more mature hiring teams look beyond simple averages and focus on how data is distributed.

What to focus on:

• Use median time to hire alongside averages to reduce skew
• Segment data by: Role type (technical vs non-technical), Seniority (junior vs leadership), and Department or function
• Track stage-wise timelines (screening, interviews, offer)

4. Add Context Before Acting on Any Metric

Even with accurate calculations, metrics alone are not enough. A number without context is just a number. The same hiring timeline can indicate inefficiency in one scenario and strong performance in another.

For instance, as we already discussed, a 45-day hiring cycle might be considered slow in one industry while normal for others.

Without context, teams often:

• Over-optimize low-impact areas
• Set unrealistic SLAs
• Push for speed at the cost of quality

What to do instead:

• Evaluate metrics relative to industry and role
• Align hiring expectations with business realities
• Focus on bottlenecks that impact outcomes, not just timelines

Regularly review and optimize the hiring process

There is no perfect recruitment or hiring process. Organizations must focus on establishing a timely review of the hiring process for continuous improvement. 

Kula ATS's reporting and analytics features can further enhance this process, providing actionable insights to optimize the hiring process and drive long-term success. 

If you're ready to amp up your recruiting strategy and reduce the time to hire, schedule a free demo of Kula today and see how we can transform your hiring process!