What is hiring velocity? Everything you need to know

Every C-suite executive should know hiring velocity, as it directly correlates with business operations. By tracking this metric, companies gain insight into the speed and efficiency of their hiring process, allowing them to identify and resolve bottlenecks. 

For example, if it takes an average of 15 days to move a candidate from application to the first screening call, your team may miss out on top talent, as many strong candidates leave the market within this timeframe. Let’s learn everything about it.

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What is hiring velocity?

Hiring velocity refers to the speed and overall time a company takes to hire new employees. This includes the time it takes to fill job openings, the number of hires made in a given time, and the total time it takes for a company to go from hiring to employee onboarding process.

Hiring velocity can be measured by the number of hires made monthly, year, or quarter. It’s important to note that hiring velocity differs from hiring efficiency, which measures the percentage of open positions filled with qualified candidates. While these terms are often mixed up, they are related concepts.

How to calculate hiring velocity?

Hiring velocity is often calculated by dividing the number of hires made by the number of open positions.

The hiring velocity formula can also incorporate metrics related to the time it takes to fill open positions and the retention rates of employees hired during a specific period.  

For example, if we wanted the hiring velocity per week for Q2:

Number of hires: 30

Number of weeks in the period: 13

Hiring velocity: 30 / 13 = 2.31

This means the hiring velocity is approximately 2.31 hires per week, which can be rounded to about 2 hires per week.

Having a high hiring velocity rate means your TA team successfully fills as many open positions as possible. This further means the company can quickly fill open positions to meet staffing needs, leading to fewer unfilled roles and a more efficient hiring process.

Likewise, if a company’s hiring velocity is low (indicating a slow filling rate), it negatively affects its overall hiring process and candidate pipeline.

Eventually, this is one of the key metrics you should track for recruiters and C-level positions. 

Calculating hiring velocity manually isn’t overly time-consuming, but when hiring at scale, it’s advisable to use tools to streamline the process and improve efficiency. 

Ideally, a company’s goal should be promptly filling every open position. A “velocity of zero” means you’re keeping up with hiring demands, filling each role as it opens. 

If hiring velocity falls below zero, unfilled positions will accumulate, creating a backlog as demand for new hires grows.

Note: There isn’t a single ideal hiring velocity rate that fits all companies. The rate varies based on industry, company size, and budget.

Time to hire and hiring velocity: What’s the difference?

Hiring velocity and time-to-hire are both important metrics in recruitment, but they measure different things:

Time-to-hire: This refers to the total time it takes to fill a job, from when the job is posted until a candidate accepts the offer. It’s a straightforward measure of the hiring process’s length.

Time-to-hire measures the days from when a candidate enters the recruitment pipeline to when they accept a job offer. In 2023, the average time-to-hire was 34 days. 

Check out how to reduce the time to hire. 

For example, here’s how to calculate time-to-hire. 

Candidate applies for the role: 5th September

Candidate accepts job offer: 20th September

Time to hire: 15 days

Hiring velocity: This focuses on how candidates move through the hiring process. It looks at how quickly candidates progress from one stage to the next (e.g., from application to interview, from interview to offer). 

It helps assess the efficiency of the recruitment process and indicates how quickly you can move candidates along to make a hire.

Simply put, hiring velocity is inversely proportional to time-to-hire. 

Why is hiring velocity important?

Hiring velocity is a vital recruitment metric as it allows you to understand how well the TA team can fill open positions. 

Hiring velocity differs fundamentally from time-to-hire as the latter focuses on how many positions are filled. In contrast, the former focuses on how well a resource hired can achieve the goals set for them. 

For example, have you hired enough software developers to finish your upcoming projects on time? 

Or have you brought in enough marketing specialists to meet your campaign goals? 

Setting these targets and hiring velocity can help you make better hiring decisions.

CEOs and hiring managers must understand that it doesn’t matter how quickly you can close a position. The real deal is finding talents with the right skills without losing accountability.

This understanding allows you, as the CEO, to encourage the talent acquisition teams and executives to be more strategic about their hiring goals. It helps you set realistic start dates based on the specific roles you’re looking to fill.

Hiring velocity challenges

Even though hiring velocity is important in talent acquisition metrics, it presents some challenges for organizations. 

Read on how to measure the ROI of talent acquisition.

Some include fewer employee referrals, increased competition for the best talents, a higher hiring fatigue rate, and a lack of proper coaching. Let’s understand each of these. 

• Less employee referrals: When companies need to hire quickly and in bulk, the TA team might opt to choose talents from the candidate pool rather than by referral. This might create a lack of morale and hurt company culture. 

• Increased competition for best talent: The end goal of any recruitment process is to hire top-quality candidates. Hence, companies hiring quickly might be tempted to offer high salaries and incentives to top talent to attract and retain them. This might lead to bidding wars between companies and eventually harm the economy. 

• Hiring fatigue: Hiring quickly can lead to hiring fatigue, which causes teams to become less selective and more likely to make mistakes. This fatigue can also lower employee retention rates and reduce overall productivity.

How to improve hiring velocity in your organization?

The first step to improving your company’s recruitment process is eliminating outdated methods or strategies. Review your TA team’s current approaches and consider using software and automated tools to streamline repetitive tasks.

Apart from that, follow the below steps:

Write an inclusive, better job description

Crafting clear, inclusive, and relevant job descriptions helps attract a diverse pool of high-quality candidates. Here’s how to improve:

• Targeted language: Tailor your descriptions to fit your audience’s language and culture rather than relying on generic or translated phrases that may miss cultural nuances.
  
• Remove gender bias: Avoid gender-specific language to appeal to a broader audience. Use tools like Gender Decoder to help eliminate any unintended bias.
  
• Keep it simple: Write in clear, straightforward language. Avoid overly complex terms or long sentences to improve readability and make the ad accessible to all literacy levels.
  
• Limit jargon: Use plain language to attract applicants from various backgrounds, ensuring that industry-specific jargon doesn’t discourage those with transferable skills.

Check out free 500+ job description templates. 

Optimize sourcing with data

Analyzing your recruitment sources helps identify where top talent is coming from so you can focus resources effectively. Track key metrics like:

• Source effectiveness: Know which platforms yield the highest-quality candidates and invest there.
  
• Candidate experience: Track where candidates engage most, such as mobile applications or specific sources, to optimize accessibility.
  
• Drop-off points: Identify sources with high dropout rates to adjust or improve the candidate experience on those platforms.

Data dashboards can streamline this process, allowing recruiters to make data-driven decisions that enhance sourcing strategies.

Automate hiring process

Automation is vital to speeding up repetitive hiring tasks like resume screening and scheduling. 

By setting up benchmarks for candidates to move through the hiring funnel automatically, recruiters can save time and avoid bottlenecks. Automation lets recruiters focus on interviews and hiring decisions, ultimately speeding up the process.

Enable self-scheduling for interviews

Allow candidates who meet initial qualifications to self-schedule interviews. This will remove scheduling bottlenecks, reduce back-and-forth communication, and keep the hiring process moving efficiently. Empowering candidates to choose interview times that work for them will also create a smoother experience.

Track and measure 

To improve hiring velocity, you need to track it consistently. Implement data collection and analysis tools that view your metrics through easy-to-read dashboards. Having up-to-date information on recruitment metrics enables quick adjustments to optimize your recruitment process.

Incorporating these practices can lead to faster, more efficient hiring and help attract top talent that aligns with your business goals.

Practical tips for improving hiring velocity 

Organizations can boost hiring velocity by optimizing key factors that drive recruitment efficiency:

• Invest in targeted sourcing strategies: Focus on sourcing channels that attract high-quality candidates with a strong return on investment. This reduces time spent on unsuitable candidates and maximizes the reach of top talent.

• Streamline the hiring process: Simplify and organize each hiring stage to ensure a smooth experience for candidates, reducing drop-offs and minimizing delays. This may include automation for scheduling and follow-ups to keep candidates engaged.

• Empower hiring managers with training: Provide ongoing coaching to hiring managers so they maintain consistent hiring standards, improve decision-making, and align hires with company needs.

Apart from the above, keep everyone involved and let the employees know the end goal. Regularly share progress and updates with everyone. 

Set up weekly interview slots, so your TA team can schedule interviews quickly and keep the hiring process moving smoothly. Maintain a clear recruitment process, where the team decides whether to proceed with a candidate at each step.

Final takeaway

Hiring velocity is a key element of recruitment strategy. It shows how quickly a company can fill positions and identifies factors that speed up or slow hiring. By measuring hiring velocity, companies can gauge their current hiring efficiency and pinpoint areas for improvement.

As we’ve explored, improving hiring velocity requires a multifaceted approach, from refining job descriptions to leveraging automation and data analytics. 

Organizations that prioritize this metric will fill roles more swiftly and cultivate a more efficient and effective talent acquisition strategy that aligns with their business goals.