This metric tells us how long it takes the City to fill a vacancy from the time a request is submitted to start a recruitment to the time a verbal offer of employment is made to a candidate. How long it takes to fill a vacancy has an impact on the City’s ability to hire the best qualified candidates. The Bureau of Human Resources tracks this metric so that it can strive to reduce the time it takes to fill a vacancy over time so the City can be more competitive with other public and private sector employers. BHR’s goal is for the average time to fill a vacancy during each fiscal year to be 85 calendar days or less.

The average time to fill a vacancy in FY 2018-19 was 81 calendar days. The average in FY 2021-22 and FY 2022-23 exceeded the target of 85 days (90 days and 89 days, respectively), and then dropped back below the goal in FY 2023-24 (84 days).

This increase in the time to fill a vacancy was due in large part to an increased number of hires in the Emergency Communications Dispatcher and Fire Fighter classifications, which tend to have longer selection processes. As the City recovered from the Global Pandemic and the accompanying “great resignation,” there were 25% more hires made in FY 2021-22 compared to FY 2018-19, and 46% more hires made in FY 2022-23 compared to FY 2018-19, without a commensurate increase in the number of Recruiters in BHR needed to handle the increased workload. This likely contributed to an increase in the time to post jobs, review candidates and establish eligible lists.

Members of underserved/underrepresented communities may find it more challenging to wait longer for a hiring decision to be made by the City if they have an opportunity to accept a job offer made to them more quickly by another employer. The Bureau of Human Resources is working with its Recruitment team and hiring managers to encourage them to reduce the time each step of the recruitment and selection process takes, in order to reduce the overall time to fill a vacancy.

The data source for this metric is the City’s applicant tracking system, NEOGOV. The Bureau of Human Resources (BHR) is responsible for this data.

The time to fill a vacancy (Time to Fill) is calculated from the date a request to fill a vacancy is received by BHR to the date the hiring manager makes a verbal offer to the candidate they have selected.  It includes the time to post the recruitment, the job posting period, the time to evaluate applicants for minimum qualifications and generate a list of eligible candidates, and the time from the referral of eligible candidates to the hiring manager until a verbal offer is extended.

This metric does not include hires made from existing eligible lists. Rather, it only includes hires where a new recruitment was conducted. It does not include hires of Police employees due to their lengthy background check or hires of casual employees due to a lengthy selection process that can skew the data.  Casual positions are those that occur, end, and recur periodically or regularly.

The Bureau of Human Resources maintains an interactive HR Analytics Dashboard that includes the Time to Fill metric, along with other recruitment metrics.  A link to the HR Analytics Dashboard can be accessed from the Open Data and Analytics page of the BHR website.