Time to hire: the delays that are not screening

Time to hire is a sum, and a sum hides where the time went. Split it: requisition open to job description agreed, agreed to first applications, applications to shortlist sent, shortlist to first interview, last interview to offer.

Funnel analytics reporting time to decision and time to fill make those segments visible. Most teams discover that the two longest queues involve a human calendar, not a document pile.

If a role gets 40 applications, screening is not the bottleneck and no tool will make it one. If it gets 800, batch evaluation against the job description changes the shape of the week.

This is the same test Hab applies outside hiring. A process is worth automating when it is high volume, rule describable and currently manual. Two out of three is a research project.

The wait between a final interview and an offer is rarely about information. It is about nobody being named as the decider. Four explicit decision states with a named owner and a written reason turn that ambiguity into a task with a person attached.

Fix the naming and the queue shortens without any software at all. That is worth knowing before a purchase, and we would rather tell you than sell you.