Employer tool
Hiring process timeline planner
Enter what your own process takes and see where the weeks go — how much sits inside your control, how much you are waiting on somebody else, and what it costs you to add a stage.
How this behaves
- Every number is one you entered, or the sum of those.
- No averages, no typical durations, no seeded defaults.
- Your process and the candidate's notice are counted separately.
- Nothing is stored or sent.
How long does it take to hire a salesperson?
Long enough that the answer is arithmetic, not a rule of thumb: your elapsed time is the brief, the search, the diary gaps between each interview stage, your internal approval, the candidate's decision and their notice, added together. Change any one of those and the date moves.
That is why this page is a planner rather than a statistic. Fill in the parts you know, leave the parts you do not at zero, and the total is an honest floor for your own process rather than somebody else's market claim.
Nothing added up yet
Enter the days your own process takes and this panel shows where the weeks go, how much of the elapsed time sits inside your control, and what it costs you to add a stage.
It will not tell you what other companies take. We do not publish an average or a typical duration, because we hold no dataset that would make one true.
What actually moves the dates
None of these carries a number, because we hold no data that would let us say how much any one of them is worth. They are mechanisms, and each is either in your gift or not.
- Starting the search before the scorecard is agreedslowerThe brief changes mid-process, earlier candidates are judged against a moving target, and the shortlist is rebuilt.
- Adding a stage because a stakeholder was unavailable for an earlier oneslowerIt adds the stage's own time plus another round of diary friction, and it rarely adds a new decision.
- Interviewer diaries released in advancefasterScheduling is usually the largest recoverable cost in a process, and it is entirely within the employer's control.
- Offer approval that needs a person who is on leaveslowerThe candidate experiences silence at exactly the point they are most likely to accept elsewhere.
- Deciding the package range before the first interviewfasterIt removes the approval round that otherwise happens after you have chosen somebody.
- Combining stages that assess the same thingfasterTwo conversations covering the same ground cost a full scheduling cycle and produce one decision.
- A work sample with no preparation windowslowerStrong candidates in work will not turn one round quickly, and the good ones decline rather than do it badly.
Before you commit to this shape
- Which stage would you drop if you had to hire in half the time, and why is it still in the process?
- Who signs off the offer, and what happens to the timeline if that person is unavailable for a week?
- Is the package range agreed now, or will it need approval after you have chosen somebody?
- Does every stage assess something the previous stage did not?
- Whose diary is the constraint, and have they released slots in advance?
- If a candidate is serving three months' notice, does the plan still work — and if not, what changes?
Common questions
What this tool will and will not do
What is the average time to hire a salesperson?
We do not publish one. Adroit holds no approved dataset of hiring durations, and an average produced without one is a number somebody made up and everybody repeats. What we can do is add up your own process honestly, which is what this planner does.
Where does the planner get its default numbers from?
It has none. Every field starts at zero, and the interview stage count starts at one. A planner that quietly seeds industry-standard defaults is a benchmark wearing a calculator's clothes, and the seeded figure ends up quoted in a board update a fortnight later.
Why does adding an interview stage cost more than the stage itself?
Because each stage carries its own diary friction as well as its own hour. The planner multiplies your per-stage scheduling allowance by the number of stages for exactly that reason — it is usually the largest recoverable cost in a hiring process, and it is entirely within the employer's control.
Why separate the time we control from the time we do not?
Because only one of them is actionable. Notice periods are contractual and rarely negotiable downwards; interview scheduling and offer approval are decisions your organisation makes every week. Splitting them tells you which conversation to have.
Is anything stored or sent?
No. The figures stay in this browser tab. They are durations, not salaries or names, and nothing reaches us unless you choose to tell us.
Next
Once you know the shape of the process
A timeline is only as good as the stages inside it. Decide what each stage is for, what the role has to achieve, and what you will pay for it.
Running this process against a deadline?
Tell us the seat, the shape of your process and the date it has to be filled by. We will be straight with you about which part of it is the constraint, and whether the date is realistic.