They just hit their quarterly target. They brought the average "Time-to-Hire" down to 60 days. They are high-fiving in the break room.
Meanwhile, your Delivery Head is panic-stricken.
He has three client projects that haven't started. The client is threatening to cancel the contract. The billing milestones are pushed back by another month.
Why is there a disconnect?
It is simple. HR measures the process. The business measures the outcome.
HR cares about "Time-to-Hire." The Business cares about "Time-to-Bill."
If you are a COO or CFO in the Professional Services industry, you do not sell products. You sell time. You sell expertise.
When that expertise is missing, you aren't just losing time. You are bleeding revenue.
It is time to stop looking at hiring as an HR function. You need to start looking at it as a supply chain function.
Most companies define "Time-to-Hire" in a way that flatters them.
Usually, the clock starts when a recruiter publishes a job ad. The clock stops when the candidate accepts the offer.
This sounds logical. But it ignores the business reality.
The business need didn't start when the recruiter posted the ad. It started weeks ago when the client signed the contract.
And the business problem doesn't end when the candidate signs the offer. It ends when that person is billable and generating revenue.
Between those gaps, you are losing money every single hour.
Let’s look at the numbers.
In Professional Services, an empty seat is not just an operational hassle. It is a direct hit to your top line.
Let’s say you have a standard Senior Consultant role. You bill this role out to clients at $100 per hour.
Now imagine you have 10 open positions for this role across your organization.
Here is the math: 10 Open Positions x $100/hr Billing Rate x 8 Hours = $8,000.
That is $8,000 lost every single day.
If you count the working days in a month, that is roughly $176,000 in lost revenue per month.
And that is just for ten roles.
Now scale that up. If you are a mid-sized firm with 50 open positions, you are looking at nearly a million dollars of lost potential revenue every month.
Every day a recruiter waits for a hiring manager to reply to an email, you lose money. Every day a candidate waits for an interview schedule, you lose money.
You aren't saving money by being careful. You are burning the value of signed contracts.
You might think your hiring process is tight. But if you look closely at the timeline, you will find three major leaks where revenue drips away.
These leaks don't usually show up on an HR dashboard. That is why they are dangerous.
This happens before the recruiter even gets to work.
A Project Manager raises a request for a new hire. But they can't hire externally yet. First, they have to check the "bench."
The Resource Management Group (RMG) needs to verify if anyone internally is available. This is a good practice in theory. It improves utilization.
But in reality, it is a bottleneck.
The request sits in an inbox for 7 days. Then it goes to a finance approval queue for 3 days. Then it goes back to the hiring manager for clarification.
The result: 10 to 14 days pass before the job is even posted.
In your HR report, "Time-to-Hire" is zero because the clock hasn't started yet. In your P&L, you have already lost $112,000 (using our previous math of $8k/day for 14 days).
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This is the most painful leak of all.
Your team works hard for 45 days. They find the perfect candidate. They interview them. They roll out the offer. The candidate accepts.
HR marks the role as "Filled." The metric looks great.
The candidate has a 90-day notice period. You wait.
On Day 85, the candidate calls. They took a counter-offer from their current employer. They are not joining.
You are back to square one.
But the damage isn't just the 45 days you spent hiring. The damage is the 45 days you spent hiring + the 85 days you waited + the new 45 days you need to find a replacement.
That is 175 days of lost revenue.
If you rely on "Time-to-Hire," you missed this disaster completely. The metric said you succeeded on Day 45. The bank account tells a different story.
The candidate actually joins. Great news.
But on Day 1, they don't have a laptop. On Day 3, they are still waiting for client system access. On Day 7, they are sitting through generic HR induction videos instead of project training.
They are on the payroll. You are paying their salary. But they are not billable.
They are "revenue-dormant."
If it takes 2 weeks to get them billable, that is another $80,000 of lost billing potential (for our 10 roles example).
You need to change the metric.
Stop asking: "How long did it take to hire?" Start asking: "How long did it take to bill?"
Time-to-Bill is the only metric that aligns Recruitment with Revenue.
The Definition: The clock starts when the Demand is raised in your Professional Services Automation (PSA) tool. The clock stops when the employee logs their first Billable Hour.
This exposes all the leaks we just talked about.
If the approval process takes 10 days, Time-to-Bill captures it. If onboarding takes 2 weeks, Time-to-Bill captures it.
Changing the metric is the first step. Here is how you fix the process to optimize for speed and revenue.
Your demand lives in your PSA or ERP system. Your supply (candidates) lives in your ATS. Usually, these two systems don't talk to each other. People copy-paste data between them. This causes delays. You need to integrate them. When a new project is signed, the demand should flow automatically to the recruiting team. [Internal Link: See how RippleHire connects your demand and supply].
Recruiters spend too much time scheduling interviews and chasing feedback. This is administrative work. It adds zero value. Use automation to handle scheduling. Use triggers to remind hiring managers to give feedback. Every hour saved in the process is an hour gained in billing.
Think like a supply chain manager. A candidate in the interview stage is "inventory in transit." You need to know exactly when that inventory will arrive. If you see a risk of a "stock-out" (an offer drop), you need a backup plan immediately. You cannot wait until the drop happens. Keep a "warm bench" of external candidates ready to go.
Hiring managers often cause the biggest delays. They sit on resumes for days. Show them the cost. If a hiring manager delays feedback by 3 days, show them the dollar value of that delay on their project P&L. When they see the cost, they will move faster.
If you are a manufacturing company, your supply chain for raw materials is critical. If the steel doesn't arrive, the factory stops.
In Professional Services, talent is your raw material.
Talent Acquisition is not a soft HR function. It is a critical Procurement function. It is the engine of your supply chain.
As a COO or CFO, you need to demand the right data.
Stop looking at dashboards that celebrate "60-day hiring cycles" while your revenue targets are missed.
Start looking at Supply Chain dashboards that track "Time-to-Bill."
The leak in your revenue is likely much larger than you think. But the good news is that it is fixable.
You just have to start measuring the right thing.
Ready to see how much revenue you are losing?
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Time-to-Hire usually measures the time from job posting to offer acceptance. Time-to-Bill measures the time from the business demand being raised until the new hire generates their first billable dollar. Time-to-Bill covers the entire revenue cycle.
Why is Time-to-Hire considering a vanity metric in Professional Services?
It is considered a vanity metric because it ignores the delays before the job is posted and the delays after the offer is accepted. You can have a great Time-to-Hire score but still lose massive amounts of revenue due to onboarding delays or internal approval bottlenecks.
How do I calculate the cost of an open position?
You can calculate it by taking the hourly billing rate of the role and multiplying it by the number of billable hours in a day (usually 8). For example, a role billing $100/hour costs you $800 in lost revenue for every day it remains open.
What is the biggest cause of revenue leakage in recruitment?
Offer drops (reneges) are often the costliest leak. If a candidate accepts an offer but fails to join 90 days later, you lose the time spent hiring them plus the notice period time. You then have to restart the process from scratch.
How can we reduce the "False Start" leak?
You can reduce this by giving your recruitment team real-time visibility into the "bench" or internal resource pool. Integrating your PSA (Professional Services Automation) with your ATS ensures that recruiters know immediately if they need to look externally or internally.
Does faster hiring lower the quality of candidates?
Not if you use the right technology. Automation handles the administrative tasks like scheduling and screening, which speeds up the process. This actually gives recruiters more time to focus on assessing quality and engaging with the best talent.
How can RippleHire help improve Time-to-Bill?
RippleHire acts as a bridge between your demand (projects) and supply (candidates). By automating scheduling, managing internal resource pools, and providing analytics on the entire timeline, RippleHire helps you identify bottlenecks and get talent billable faster.
Who should own the Time-to-Bill metric?
While HR executes the hiring, the metric should be jointly owned by HR and Operations/Delivery. The COO needs to oversee this metric as it directly impacts the company's revenue and gross margins.