Time to Accept
2022 National Average Value
68
days
What is the Time to Accept?
Time to Accept is the average number of calendar days from the date a job requisition is approved to the date an offer is accepted and can serve as a measure of the efficiency of your recruiting and hiring process.
Why is the Time to Accept important?
In a rapidly changing labor market, this metric can be very helpful for the HR function and talent acquisition team to understand how quickly they can expect to fill an open requisition, especially for pivotal or hard-to-fill roles in a competitive labor market.
What is the average value of Time to Accept?
According to the Saratoga Workforce Index, the national average Time to Accept in 2022 was 68 days (about 2 months and 1 week).
What is Time to Accept by industry?
The median Time to Accept ranges from 36 days to 89 days depending on the industry. If you need the specific Time to Accept benchmarks for your industry, please contact us.
Where can I get Time to Accept benchmarks?
You can find it in the annual Saratoga HR and Workforce Benchmarking Study. Saratoga releases the Time to Accept benchmark for over 20 different industries each year. The national average is also released as part of the annual Saratoga Workforce Index.
How is Time to Accept calculated?
Time to Accept is calculated as the average number of calendar days from the date a job requisition is approved to the date an offer is accepted. This calculation includes non-contingent candidates and excludes college interns.
What does a low Time to Accept mean?
A low Time to Accept can indicate that candidates are making decisions quickly on job offers. This could be a sign that your company is highly desirable to work for, that your job offers are competitive, or that your recruitment process is efficient.
It could also suggest that candidates are not weighing other offers from competitors, which could be particularly relevant for high impact positions in a tight labor market. A low Time to Accept can be beneficial for the HR function and talent acquisition team as it allows them to fill open requisitions more quickly.
What does a high Time to Accept mean?
A high Time to Accept could indicate several things. It could mean that candidates are taking longer to decide on your job offer, possibly because they are weighing other offers from competitors. This could be particularly relevant for high impact positions in a tight labor market, such as healthcare workers or software developers/engineers.
A high Time to Accept could also point to a slow labor market, a very slow or lengthy recruiting process, or the inability of a recruiting function to set clear hiring criteria and make decisions. This could potentially slow down the process of filling open requisitions, especially for pivotal or hard to fill roles.
What other benchmarks are relevant to Time to Accept?
Other relevant benchmarks include:
About the Saratoga Workforce Index
The Saratoga Workforce Index is an indispensable reference of national averages of 30 commonly requested HR metrics. Based on PwC Saratoga’s annual workforce benchmarking study of over 1000 metrics spanning hundreds of companies and over 20 industries, the Saratoga Workforce Index is your “quick start” guide to workforce benchmarks.
Download the guide to see the national averages for all of these:
- 90 Day Total Turnover Rate
- Average Number of Direct Reports
- Cost per Hire
- Director Headcount Ratio
- Executive Headcount Ratio
- Finance FTE Ratio
- First Year of Service Turnover Rate
- General & Administrative Function Voluntary Separation Rate
- Hire Rate
- HR FTE Ratio
- Information Technology FTE Ratio
- Labor Cost Revenue Percent
- Layers
- Learning & Development Investment per Employee
- Legal FTE Ratio
- Management Headcount Ratio
- Manager Headcount Ratio
- Offer Acceptance Rate
- One to Three Years of Service Voluntary Separation Rate
- Promotion Rate
- Racial/Ethnic Minority Headcount Percent
- Racial/Ethnic Minority Promotion Rate
- Racial/Ethnic Minority Voluntary Separation Rate
- Revenue per FTE
- Time to Accept
- Time to Start
- Turnover Rate
- Vacancy Rate
- Voluntary Separation Rate
- Women Executive Headcount Percent
- Women Headcount Percent
- Women Promotion Rate
- Women Voluntary Separation Rate
Need industry-specific benchmarks?
We provide these values as a reference point for discussions. However, given the high variance across industries, sizes and revenue, these national averages should NOT be used to make important business decisions or used in any formal reporting.
If you intend to use benchmarks for business decisions, please join Saratoga as a full member so you can have access to more specific comparison groups for each industry, revenue, size, profit/non-profit status and more. With a full membership, you’ll have access to over 1,000 metrics that are much more accurate and specific than a national average. The membership process is relatively simple, mostly automated and reasonably priced with a clear ROI.
Referencing Saratoga Workforce Index Data
If you choose to refer to these metrics in any of your materials, whether internally or externally, we ask that you include the following statement:
Excerpted from the Saratoga Workforce Index. © 2023 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, all rights reserved. Data is for discussion purposes only and cannot be used for investment decisions or financial evaluations.
You may include up to five metrics in any internal or external publication without any additional permissions. Contact us at saratoga@pwc.com if you want to use more than five or would like to reproduce the Saratoga Workforce Index in its entirety.
About Saratoga
Saratoga workforce and HR benchmarks provide reference points for executive-level discussions, context for people dashboards, and data to inform workforce and HR decisions. Hundreds of companies across over 20 industries trust Saratoga each year to supply over 1,000 validated workforce benchmarks around turnover, diversity, staffing, productivity, efficiency, fairness, and more.
Request a demo of Saratoga to get access to industry-specific benchmarks for up to 1000 benchmarks.