What Adaptable TA Leadership Looks Like in Today’s Fast-Changing Hiring Landscape with Daja Davis of Avis Budget Group

Speaker A: Early in my career, I thought that growth meant constant promotion or always the next title and the next level. I've learned that sometimes taking a lateral move or stepping into a completely different space is exactly what prepares you for that next big opportunity. Every experience, whether it's a stretch assignment, a cross functional project, or even a challenge, builds your perspective and strengthens your foundation as a leader. So my advice would be to trust the process. Stay open, don't fear detours. The path to growth isn't always vertical, but every step brings you closer to your purpose.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the Talent Acquisition Leaders Podcast. I'm, um, your host, Ryan Dull, and on this show we interview today's industry leaders in talent acquisition to discuss challenges, best practices and what the future holds. If you are working in talent acquisition and have always wanted to sit down with your peers at other companies to exchange ideas and learn, well, this show is the next best thing. Join us each week as we bring you a new expert interview and extract their expertise. This episode is brought to you by SageMark HR. Transform your recruiting practices with leading edge technology Selecting the right recruiting solutions to enable your strategy is one of the biggest challenges leaders face today. You know technology will help, but searching all the options to find out what will work best for your specific needs can be both overwhelming and time consuming. At SageMark HR, we make selecting the right recruiting technology easy. Our proven process has helped Companies such as 3M M, Comcast, Stryker, Walgreens and many more reach out to us at SageMark HR for a free consultation to learn how we can help you improve results with less stress and confidently change from reacting to leading.

Speaker C: Hello and welcome to another episode of the TA Leaders Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Dull and today I have a fun conversation with Deja Davis. Deja is the TA Director for Avis Budget Group. Deja, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Thank you, Ryan. I'm so excited to be here and I'm truly honored. Thank you.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's great to have you. So let's start out and jump into your background a little bit. If you wouldn't mind sharing how you got started in talent acquisition and maybe some of the roles that you've held leading up to your current role.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I want to start off by just saying I'm definitely a wife. I'm a mom of two and I'm a true recruiting enthusiast. And as you mentioned earlier, I do serve as the Director of Talent Acquisition at Avis Budget Group, where I get to really combine my passion for people, process and performance to help Drive hiring strategies across the business. Like most people in talent acquisition, I didn't grow up saying I want to be a recruiter. My journey started in retail. I worked for Footlocker brands during high school, rotating between Champ Sports and Kids Foot Locker. I stayed on through college and even after graduation, but I wasn't sure what came next. So that's when I had an opportunity that opened up at my alma mater, Stephen F. Austin State University as an admissions counselor and recruiter. I had worked in the admissions office as a student and was heavily involved on campus, so I felt like it was a natural fit. Later I returned to retail by joining Mattress Firm and going through their sales manager and training program and rapidly growing into a store manager, the area manager. At that point I knew I wanted to become a district manager, but I also knew I needed a unique edge. So I made a strategic pivot. I said to myself, if I want to go north, I may need to go east first. And so that's when I chose to move into recruiting to master the art of uh, finding and attracting talent that could help build a performance driven team. And, and that was in 2009 and I've been in talent acquisition ever since.

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, that's great. Thank you for sharing that. So if you wouldn't mind share a little bit about Avis Budget Group as an organization as well as your role as the director of talent acquisition. There maybe size and scope of your role and team, number of hires, those types of things.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So Avis Budget Group, we're uh, a leading global provider of mobility solutions both through Abus and Budget brands, which is approximately 10,250 rental locations in approximately 180 countries around the world. And through our Zipcar brand, which is the world's leading car sharing network, we operate most of our car rental locations in North America, Europe and Australasia directly and operate primarily through licensees in other parts of the world. Since the Americas region is the largest, we split field recruiting in half. So I oversee the Northeast and central regions. My counterpart oversees the west and the Southeast. And my team supports airport operations supply chain which is our maintenance division and operations manager roles. I uh, lead a team of over a dozen recruiters who support a large portion of the 15,000 hires that we do in the US often in complex and seasonal environments with fast turnaround requirements.

Speaker C: Great, thanks for sharing that. So let's talk a little bit about some accomplishments that you and your team have had over the last couple of years. Share anything that you'd like to Share specifically around results that you've gained or key initiatives that you've led.

Speaker B: Any of those types of things?

Speaker A: Absolutely. So when I first joined talent acquisition, we were in this transformational phase. Our global vice president of uh, Talent Acquisition, Heidi Myers, had been in the company for about six months and she was very intentional about focusing on um, three pillars which was process, people and technology. She began by evaluating every recruitment process we had in place from there ensuring we had the right people in the right seats and ultimately optimizing everything with technology. So we created a structure that supported long term scalability. That's actually when I came on board to lead hiring for operations and at the time, corporate functions. And we then focused on refining how we hire, not just to move faster, but smarter. Our goal was to hire with speed while also ensuring candidates showed up and stayed. That meant building intentional touch points throughout the process to improve both engagement and retention. We align more closely with our operations partners tracked metrics and held our recruiters accountable to things like no show, first day rates and early day turnover. And we used those insights to strengthen our strategy in continuous accountability. We introduced tools that modernized how we operate. So one of the biggest game changers was our AI tool Miles, who hosts our career site and is our AI chatbot. Uh Miles engages with candidates 24 7. He answers questions, schedules, interviews and helps create a seamless, efficient experience for both candidates and recruiters. So the journey has continued to be transformational. We've evolved from traditional manual approach to one that's data driven, candidate centric and technologically advanced. It's been exciting to be a part, part of building that foundation and seeing our results come to life.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's great. I love the name, great name for the, the business that, that you're in. So as you look at what's next for your organization, talk a little bit about maybe some key initiatives from here looking forward.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So this year our key initiatives are all about driving consistency, fulfillment, candidate experience and retention across the business. We've placed a big focus on building out our part time hiring strategy. It's a huge opportunity area for us to support business flexibility and open the door to new talent pipelines. We also focus on meeting every hiring demand across all regions. That means staying proactive in using dashboards and data to aid in forecasting and filling roles. And we're laser focused on retention, specifically improving no show first day rates in comes within the first seven days. It's not just about bringing people in the door, it's about making sure that they stay feel Supported, engaged and are set uh, up for success from day one.

Speaker C: Thanks for that. Would you mind now maybe sharing one of the biggest wins that you've had personally as a leader?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. You know, a few months into starting with Avis budget group, I inherited the supply chain recruiting function. And and I immediately went into discovery mode. I looked at performance processes and pipeline flow across the team. What I found wasn't a lack of effort. Despite working hard, the team was hiring below their goal. There were missed opportunities that created a gap between effort and output. And with critical roles like A and B automotive technicians, where the market is competitive and timing is everything, we couldn't afford to be reactive. So I realized we needed more than just a quick fix. We needed a framework. Something that was simple to understand, easy to implement and powerful enough to sustain results. That's when I introduced three pillars of high performing recruiters, which was organization, ownership and urgency. Since launching that focus in uh, June of 2024, the transformation has been remarkable. We doubled our automotive technicians hires year over year. The back half of 2024 had over 95% more hires than the front half. And overall performance in technician hiring increased by 20 percentage points. So these weren't just numbers for us. These were signs of a team really stepping into their full potential. So with organization, we focused on requisition management, efficient workflows and documentation and visibility. So we cleaned requisitions and old pipelines. The recruiters practiced live dispositioning to really avoid pipeline confusion and ensure real time updates. We implemented twice weekly pipeline reviews to monitor funnel health, adjust priorities and create immediate action plans when momentum slowed. And then we had a shared team tracker that gave team, every recruiter and leader visibility into their performance metrics like outreach, interviews and conversions. This really supported their self accountability and data driven mindset. And then for ownership, for that it meant really owning the stakeholder partnership, candidate experience and data driven decisions. So the recruiters began holding weekly connects with their hiring managers and regional leaders. These conversations weren't just status updates, they were strategy sessions. We changed the way that we approach candidate interactions, focusing on their motivations, urgency and experience rather than just resume matching. And the recruiters assessed what was most important to each candidate and built personalized journeys. We had the team tracker which included conversion rates by recruiter, which enabled reflection, coaching and strategic pivots when their results didn't match their effort. And this led to more intentional sourcing and smarter prioritization. And lastly, when we focused on urgency, we implemented a three by three rule which was three outreach Attempts daily phone, text and email, up to three days per quality candidate. We set up resume alerts and daily sourcing and those were really built into our uh, recruiter routines. Positive responses triggered same day follow up with the goal of scheduling them immediately. And recruiters obtained hiring manager availability before sourcing and scheduled interviews directly instead of waiting on approvals. Offers were made within 24 hours post interview, reducing that risk of losing the top talent. So with those three focuses we were really able to significantly increase performance.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's great. Thanks for sharing that level of detail. I think that's a fantastic example. Last question I would have for you is what's some advice you would have for others in the TA space? The audience is mainly made up of folks in TA are interested in TA and would love to hear your advice for those in the audience.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, early in my career I thought that growth meant constant promotion or always the next title and the next level. I've learned that sometimes taking a lateral move or stepping into a completely different space is exactly what prepares you for that next big opportunity. Every experience, whether it's a stretch assignment, a uh, cross functional project or even a challenge, builds your perspective and strengthens your foundation as a leader. So my advice would be to trust the process, stay open, don't fear detours. The path to growth isn't always vertical, but every step brings you closer to your purpose.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's some great advice. And the world is changing very fast right now. We're right in the middle of it and so I think that's great advice for others to embrace that, learn about it, apply it to practices that you have, whether they're long standing or short practices. You want to always continuously be improving that. I think that's excellent advice. Daja, thank you so much for joining me today. I think you did a great job.

Speaker A: Thank you so much, Ryan.

Speaker B: We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Talent Acquisition Leaders Podcast. If something we said today resonated with you, please subscribe, rate and download our podcast and share the episode with your network. Ready to transform your recruiting practices with Leading Edge technology? Just like our other clients at 3M, um, Comcast, Stryker and Walgreens, then reach out@sagemarkhr.com for a free consultation.