The Time-to-Hire Problem
According to Gem (2025), the average time-to-hire across industries is 44 days. For technical and senior roles, it can stretch well beyond 60 days. Every day that passes increases the risk of losing your top candidate to a competitor, and iCIMS (2025) reports that 60% of candidates abandon hiring processes that take longer than two weeks.
The financial impact is significant. Open positions cost money in lost productivity, overtime for existing staff, and missed business opportunities. And when you finally hire, a rushed decision driven by urgency, rather than data, can lead to a bad hire that SHRM (2024) estimates costs up to $240K.
Where the Bottlenecks Actually Are
Most time-to-hire analyses break the process into stages: sourcing, screening, interviewing, decision, and offer. The screening and initial interview stages are where async video makes the biggest impact.
Traditional phone screens are serial processes. A recruiter can conduct maybe 6-8 phone screens per day, each requiring scheduling, the call itself, and note-taking afterward. Multiply that by 50 applicants for a popular role, and screening alone takes weeks.
With async video, candidates screen themselves on their own time. The recruiter reviews responses at 1.5x speed, comparing candidates side by side. interviewstream (2025) found that video interviews are 6x faster to conduct than phone screens.
The Math: How Async Saves Days
Consider a typical hiring scenario:
- Traditional approach: 50 applicants, 20 phone screens at 30 minutes each (including scheduling) = 10+ hours of recruiter time, spread over 1-2 weeks due to scheduling conflicts.
- Async approach: 50 applicants, 20 async interviews reviewed at ~5 minutes each = under 2 hours of review time, completable in a single session.
That is not a marginal improvement, it is an order-of-magnitude reduction in the screening phase. And since 42% of candidates drop out due to scheduling issues (Cronofy, 2024), you also retain more candidates in your pipeline.
Speed Without Sacrificing Quality
A common concern is that faster means sloppier. The opposite is true. Async interviews create structured evaluation conditions by default: every candidate answers the same questions, and reviewers use consistent scorecards. Schmidt & Hunter (1998) confirms that structured interviews are 2x more predictive of job performance.
And because multiple reviewers can independently evaluate the same recording, you get richer signal on each candidate. No more relying on a single recruiter's gut feeling from a phone call with no recording.
Real Impact on Hiring Metrics
Teams that adopt async video interviewing for their screening stage typically see:
- Screening phase compressed from 2 weeks to 2-3 days
- Higher candidate completion rates (no scheduling friction)
- Better quality shortlists due to standardized evaluation
- Fewer interview rounds needed overall
Getting Started
You do not need to overhaul your entire hiring process. Start by replacing phone screens for your highest-volume role with async video interviews. Measure the impact on time-to-hire, candidate drop-off, and quality of hire. Most teams see results within the first week.
iCIMS (2025) found that 60% of candidates quit slow hiring processes. Speed is not just an operational metric, it is a candidate experience metric and a quality-of-hire metric.
Start a free trial of StormInterview and see how much time you can save on your very first batch of interviews.