Time-to-Fill Benchmark Statistics by Role Level (2026)

The 44-Day Median, and Why It Is Not a Direct SHRM Citation

Two independent secondary sources, LinkUs Group’s recruiting-cost blog and a separate 2025 recruitment-benchmarking article, both name and date the same primary report: SHRM’s 2025 Recruiting Benchmarking Report. Between them, they put the median time-to-fill at approximately 44 days for nonexecutive roles and 45 days for executive roles.

SHRM’s own site did not return that figure directly. Every URL attempted against shrm.org for this page, including the specific time-to-fill topic page, returned a 404. SHRM’s press room does confirm the organization published 2025 benchmarking reports generally, but that specific page’s own content stops at hiring-stage sub-metrics, screening and interview days, eight to nine days each, without restating the 44-day headline figure itself. The numbers below rest on two corroborating secondaries naming the same primary report rather than a direct load of SHRM’s own report.

Where Time-to-Fill Runs Longer: Extra-Large Organizations

Both secondaries agree the median stretches meaningfully at the largest employers. Extra-large organizations report 61 days for nonexecutive roles and 60 days for executive roles, roughly two and a half weeks slower than the overall 44 and 45-day medians. More approval layers and a larger, more formal hiring process are the intuitive explanation, though neither secondary source attributes the gap to a specific cause. The extra-large figures are reported as observed data; neither secondary explains why the gap exists.

What Not to Cite From This Data Set

The same recruitment-benchmarking article that supplies the 44-day figure also lists industry-specific breakdowns, technology at 48 days, healthcare at 41, retail at 25, hospitality at 39. Its own sourcing note for those numbers says “article analysis” rather than naming a primary, a meaningfully weaker attribution than the SHRM-sourced headline figure sitting next to it in the same piece. Treat the industry splits as unsourced until a primary confirms them separately.

An older, commonly repeated 36 to 42-day range for time-to-fill should also be retired. It traces to no confirmed source and is superseded by the more recently attributed 44-day figure above.

A Two-Source, Low-Authority Corroboration

Neither secondary citing the SHRM figure is a major, brand-name publisher. One is a small recruiting-cost consultancy blog, the other reads as a personal or aggregator blog. Both independently name and date the same primary report, which is corroborating evidence, but a reader who needs a higher-authority citation should treat the 44 and 45-day figures as the best currently available public estimate rather than a number pulled directly from SHRM’s own report page.

Why Time-to-Fill Alone Does Not Diagnose a Slow Month

A firm’s own time-to-fill number is only useful measured against a healthy flow of job orders in the first place. A slow month can look identical whether the actual bottleneck is execution speed once an order exists, or a shortage of new orders reaching the desk at all, two different problems with two different fixes. Benchmarking against the 44-day median above only answers the first question.

The Numbers

Sources

The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.

• LinkUs Group, Average Time to Fill by Industry: Calculate Hidden Costs
• digidai.github.io, Recruitment Efficiency Benchmarks Report (2025)

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