Hiring·Apr 14, 2026·6 min read
Time-to-hire benchmarks across 12 industries (Q1 2026)
We analyzed 1.2M completed checks to see how fast modern teams are actually moving — and where the bottlenecks really live.
PA
Priya Anand
Data Science, Ethur
Every quarter we publish anonymized, aggregate benchmarks from the millions of background checks that flow through Ethur. Here's what Q1 2026 looked like.
Headline numbers
- Median time-to-hire across all industries: 4.1 days (down from 5.3 in Q1 2025).
- Fastest sector: gig marketplaces at 9 minutes median.
- Slowest sector: healthcare at 11.2 days, driven by license verification queues.
- Biggest YoY improvement: transportation, down 38% thanks to digital MVR pulls.
Where the bottlenecks actually live
Contrary to what most teams assume, the bottleneck is rarely the background check itself. Across our dataset, 71% of total cycle time is spent on candidate-side actions: consenting, uploading documents, and responding to disputes. That's why our 2026 roadmap is heavily focused on the candidate portal.
What top-quartile teams do differently
- They send the consent invite within 60 seconds of the offer (not the next morning).
- They use SMS as the primary channel — email completion rates are 3x lower.
- They pre-fill candidate data from their ATS instead of asking candidates to retype it.
- They auto-clear obvious adjudications and reserve human review for edge cases.
Want the full report with industry-by-industry breakdowns? It's free in our Guides library.