Key takeaways:
- Over half of the fastest-growing firms now place in under 10 days. A third of firms that lost revenue took 10 to 19 days.
- Price is still important, but two recent public staffing contracts give it 20 to 25 points out of 100. Turnaround is written into the scope in hours.
- Split your speed into four timestamps, find the slow stretch by desk, and present the number to your client ahead of renewal.
Every open requisition starts a timer, and your client is watching it.
Most agency owners can quote their markup to the decimal. But do you know how many hours pass between the requisition and when you deliver the first qualified candidate to the client?
Ten days is the speed limit that helps firms grow
The definition of “fast” changed this year. Among firms that grew revenue 25% or more in 2025, 56% place candidates in under 10 days on average. And 22% of them place in three days or less. Meanwhile, of the firms that lost revenue in 2025, 34% had average placement times of 10 to 19 days.
The link between speed and growth used to be anything under 20 days.
We’ve argued before that speed alone won’t keep an account. That’s still true. Speed has become the baseline clients only notice when you miss it.
Price makes up 25% or less of the score in public staffing bids
While private clients rarely share how they pick vendors, public buyers have to. So their contracts may give you a good idea of how you’re being evaluated.
In January 2026, Sedgwick County, Kansas, issued an RFP for temporary medical staffing. Pricing is worth 20 out of 100 points in the evaluation scoring criteria. The scope asks agencies to send possible candidates within two business days of a staffing request. The county also says it isn’t buying on lowest price alone, and it cites responsiveness among the factors it weighs.
The City of Brownsville, Texas, asked for even faster turnarounds in its 2026 temporary staffing RFP. Agencies must submit qualified candidate profiles within 24 to 48 hours and replace unsatisfactory workers within 24 hours. Cost is worth 25 of 100 points. The ability to meet required response times falls under a 35-point methodology score.
While two contract examples can’t represent every buyer, they can help us understand how a client might make and defend their decision. And turnaround is in the scope of work and price accounts for a quarter of the score or less.
Employers take 39 days to fill a typical role, and 44% have jobs they can’t fill
Your client also has an in-house benchmark to compare you against. SHRM’s 2026 recruiting benchmarking data covers more than 4,600 organizations. The median time to fill a nonexecutive role is 39 calendar days. Your fee has to buy back days from that timeline.
And the orders are out there. In a July 2026 Express Employment Professionals-Harris Poll survey, 44% of 1,006 hiring decision-makers said their company has open positions it can’t fill. That’s up from 36% the previous fall. The firm that gets a qualified candidate in front of the client first has the best shot at those orders.
Track four timestamps on every order to find lost time
Time to fill blends everything into one figure, so it can’t tell you where the days go. Break each order into four timestamps instead:
- Requisition received: The clock starts when your team receives the client’s order.
- First candidate sourced: Your recruiter found the first person to screen. The time since step 1 will tell you the speed of your intake and search.
- First qualified candidate submitted: The first screened candidate goes to the client. The time since step 2 reflects screening speed and recruiter workload.
- First interview scheduled: The client books time with your candidate. The time since step 3 often depends more on the client than on your team.
Track the median time between each step. One six-week search for a hard-to-find specialist will drag an average up and hide what’s happening on routine orders.
Then cut the median by desk and by client. A firm-wide number can hide one desk that runs two days behind the rest.
Some delays come from the client’s approval and interview process
Some of the delay won’t be yours. In SHRM’s 2025 recruiting benchmarking brief, extra-large employers took 61 days to fill nonexecutive roles. They also spent nearly twice as long as the typical organization on approvals, posting, and interviews.
If you find that submit-to-interview is where the days pile up, bring it to the client with a solution. Held interview slots and a 24-hour feedback window are easy asks once both sides have the numbers.
Timestamps keep that delay from falling on your side of the ledger at renewal. They also give you and the client a shared problem to fix.
AI saves the most time in candidate search and screening
Recruiters say searching for candidates eats more of their day than anything else, followed by screening. Most report that AI has cut time on those two tasks by 26% to 75%.
These tasks fall between steps 1 and 3. Direct new AI investments toward the bottleneck identified by your timestamps, because accelerating an already fast stage won’t have much impact on your median performance.
Share your speed numbers with clients before renewal
Once you have medians by desk, take them into your quarterly business reviews. If you’re fast, you now have the proof. If you’re slow, show the gap, the fix, and the date you’ll re-measure.
A client who sees you tracking your own time has less reason to start tracking it with a competitor. It also turns a vague promise of “responsive service” into a commitment.
Our State of Staffing data links this kind of discipline to growth. Growing agencies scored 4.56 on a seven-point operational maturity scale, while contracting agencies scored 3.56. One of the habits on that scale is tracking at least one conversion step. Submit-to-interview is a good place to start.
