Two credible sources currently describe the average time to fill a role. One puts it near 44 days. The other puts the median at 63.5 days. That is a 45% gap between figures that appear, on their face, to measure the same thing.
Neither is wrong. The gap is definitional, and understanding it is worth more than either number — particularly if you are in India, where a structural feature of the market makes both benchmarks unusable as a target.
What the sources say
| Metric | Figure | Source and note |
|---|---|---|
| Median time to fill | 63.5 days | Employ 2026 recruiter report; improved from 67.7 days |
| Average time to fill | ~44 days | SHRM benchmarking |
| Cost per hire, non-executive | $5,475 | SHRM 2025 benchmarking |
| Cost per hire, executive | $35,879 | SHRM 2025 benchmarking |
All figures are US-derived. Cost-per-hire figures cover direct recruiting spend and exclude vacancy productivity loss and ramp time.
Why the time figures disagree
Three definitional choices, each of which moves the number by weeks.
When the clock starts. At requisition approval, at job posting, or at first candidate contact. The gap between requisition approval and a live posting is often two weeks of internal process that one definition counts and another does not.
When the clock stops. At offer acceptance, or at the new hire's start date. This is the largest single source of divergence, and it is the one that matters most outside the US.
Mean or median. A handful of nine-month executive searches drag a mean upward while leaving the median untouched. For a metric with a long right tail, the mean describes almost nobody.
Why neither number works in India
India's professional services and IT sectors carry some of the longest notice periods in the world. Original research by Analytics India Magazine found that roughly one in three IT roles carries a full 90-day notice period — the highest share of any skilled job category in the country — with large services firms typically applying 90 days to experienced hires, while product companies and global capability centres run 30 to 60 days.
That single fact breaks the comparison. A US benchmark measured to start date implicitly assumes a two-week notice norm. An Indian company measuring the same way will report a time-to-fill that looks catastrophic against it, while an Indian company measuring to offer acceptance will report one that looks excellent and bears no relationship to when work actually gets done.
The workable approach is to report both and label them precisely: time to offer acceptance, which measures your recruiting process and is fairly comparable internationally, and time to productive start, which measures your actual staffing lag and is not comparable to anything published. Improvement efforts target the first. Capacity planning uses the second.
Cost per hire, and what it excludes
SHRM's 2025 figures — $5,475 for non-executive and $35,879 for executive roles — are among the better-sourced numbers in this space, and the seven-fold gap between the two is the most useful thing in them. A single blended cost-per-hire figure across a mixed workforce is close to meaningless; segmenting by role band is where the metric starts informing decisions.
What cost per hire does not include is the larger part of what a hire actually costs the business: the output not produced while the role was open, and the gap between what you pay a new hire and what they deliver in their first months. Those belong to replacement cost, which is a different and much larger number.
There is no India benchmark, and that is fine
We looked for a published Indian cost-per-hire or time-to-fill benchmark with a stated methodology and sample. We did not find one. What exists is recruitment-vendor content restating US figures in rupees.
This matters less than it appears. External benchmarks in hiring are weak evidence at the best of times, because time to fill is dominated by role scarcity, location and compensation position rather than by recruiting competence — none of which a cross-industry average controls for. Your own trailing figures, segmented by role family and tracked over eight quarters, will tell you more than any published number, and cannot be argued away by someone producing a different benchmark.
What to measure instead
Segment by role family. Engineering, sales and finance behave differently enough that a blended figure hides every actionable signal.
Track requisition ageing, not just averages. The count of roles open beyond 60 days is more useful to an executive team than a mean, because it identifies specific problems rather than describing a distribution.
Watch offer acceptance rate alongside time. A falling acceptance rate is usually the earliest signal that a compensation position has slipped, and it shows up before time-to-fill deteriorates.
Report the definition every time. Written into the appendix of your board pack, once, so the discussion is about the trend rather than the arithmetic.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good time to hire?
There is no defensible universal answer, and the two most-cited figures differ by 45% because they measure different intervals. Segment by role family and compare against your own trailing twelve months.
Should we measure to offer acceptance or to start date?
Both, reported separately. Acceptance measures your recruiting process; start date measures your staffing lag, and in India the gap between them is frequently 90 days.
Is cost per hire worth tracking at all?
Yes, segmented by role band — the seven-fold gap between executive and non-executive hiring in SHRM's data shows why a blended figure is not actionable.
Why is there no Indian benchmark?
No organisation publishes one with a stated methodology and sample. Figures presented as Indian benchmarks are generally US data restated in rupees.
Time-to-fill and cost-per-hire figures are from SHRM benchmarking and the Employ 2026 recruiter report, both US-derived, reported via secondary compilations. The notice-period finding is original research by Analytics India Magazine, cited via secondary reporting. No Indian time-to-fill or cost-per-hire benchmark with a published methodology was found. The recommendations on what to measure are Helion's judgement rather than survey findings. Current as at July 2026. General information, not advice.