Time in stage
Also called: stage duration, stage age
How the metric is used
Two views:
- Per-candidate: for an individual candidate, how many days they’ve spent at each stage. A candidate stuck at “interview” for 12 days is being lost to follow-up delay.
- Per-role aggregated: the median time across all candidates at each stage for the role. Reveals which stages are the bottleneck.
The aggregated view is the diagnostic one. A team can complain that “hiring is slow” without knowing whether the bottleneck is at sourcing (it takes 14 days to get to first conversation) or at offer (it takes 9 days from final round to written offer).
Typical European SMB stage durations
Indicative medians:
- Applied → screen: 3-7 days. Above that, the candidate is being lost to slower response.
- Screen → first interview: 5-10 days. Mostly scheduling.
- First interview → final: 7-14 days. Often includes a take-home or multiple panel members.
- Final → offer: 2-5 days. Anything above 7 is a process problem.
- Offer → accept: 3-7 days. Negotiation included.
The diagnostic moves
Once you can see time in stage, three actions become natural:
- Fix the worst stage first: the one with the longest median time relative to typical, not the one that feels slow.
- Set “age in stage” alerts: candidates stuck at any stage past a threshold get flagged for follow-up.
- Compare time in stage across hiring managers: not to grade them, but to find process learnings worth sharing.
Where Join fits
Time in stage is visible per candidate and aggregated per role in Join. Stuck-candidate alerts can be set per stage threshold. See the features page.
