Director of Learning and Development

Madison Davis

Director, Learning & Development

Position Overview

Madison-Davis is entering a significant stage of growth, and we are looking for a Director of Learning & Development to build a formal, scalable training and development function across the organization.

This is not a role for someone stepping into an established corporate university and simply administering existing courses. We are looking for someone who can take the knowledge, processes, best practices, and leadership expertise that already exist throughout the business and turn them into a structured, repeatable development program that can scale with the company.

The initial priority will be creating a consistent development experience for employees entering our recruiting and sales organization, particularly those beginning their careers through our Researcher program. From there, this person will build ongoing development programs for experienced employees, managers, and future leaders across Madison-Davis.

This is a highly hands-on role. The right person will be comfortable building curriculum, facilitating training, coaching employees directly, working alongside managers, listening to real calls, conducting role plays, measuring results, and continuously improving the program based on what is actually happening in the business.

Key Responsibilities

Build the Madison-Davis Learning & Development Program

• Design and implement a structured company-wide learning and development strategy aligned with Madison-Davis's growth plans.
• Build a consistent new-hire training and development program that takes employees from initial company and industry education through role-specific competency and independent performance.
• Create clear development pathways for Recruiting, Sales, 360, and other front-office positions.
• Partner closely with business leaders and subject-matter experts to capture what our strongest employees do well and translate those behaviors into repeatable training.
• Establish appropriate learning milestones, competency expectations, and development checkpoints throughout an employee's first year.

New-Hire Training & Development

• Own and continuously improve the new-hire learning experience.
• Create a blended training environment utilizing classroom instruction, live demonstrations, shadowing, role plays, coaching, and real-world application.
• Develop training around staffing fundamentals, recruiting, sourcing, candidate communication, sales, company operations, systems, compliance, and market knowledge.
• Partner with individual practice leaders to incorporate industry-specific training across areas such as Technology, Accounting & Finance, Compliance, Risk, Corporate & Investment Banking, and Professional Services.
• Ensure employees are progressively given greater responsibility as competency develops rather than relying solely on time-based progression.

Recruiting & Sales Enablement

• Build practical training that directly improves front-office performance.
• Develop programs around sourcing, outreach, candidate qualification, candidate management, cold calling, discovery, objection handling, client development, job qualification, closing, referrals, and other critical staffing skills.
• Conduct live role plays, call reviews, and coaching sessions with employees.
• Work directly with managers to identify performance gaps and build targeted training around them.
• Develop recurring training for existing employees rather than limiting L&D to new-hire onboarding.

Leadership Development

• Partner with leadership and managers to identify high-potential employees and future leaders across the organization.
• Build clear development pathways for employees progressing from individual contributor into management and senior leadership.
• Create an emerging-leader program that gives future managers structured exposure to coaching, mentoring, hiring, performance management, team leadership, and business operations.
• Develop formal manager training around coaching, 1:1s, performance management, accountability, metrics, difficult conversations, employee development, and succession planning.
• Help create individual development plans for employees identified as potential future leaders.
• Manager Partnership & Coaching
• Work closely with Managers, Managing Directors, Partners, and other senior leaders to ensure centralized training is reinforced within individual teams.
• Give managers tools and frameworks that allow them to coach their employees more effectively.
• Establish consistent expectations around employee development while allowing for differences between practice areas and markets.
• Serve as a resource to managers when performance trends indicate a broader training or development need.

Learning Content & Knowledge Management

• Build and maintain a centralized learning and knowledge library within SharePoint.
• Create practical training materials including playbooks, quick-reference guides, process documentation, videos, role-play exercises, call examples, manager resources, and training presentations.
• Ensure materials remain current as company processes, technology, compensation plans, and operating practices evolve.
• Create a true single source of truth for how Madison-Davis trains employees and executes key front-office processes.

Measurement & Continuous Improvement

• Establish meaningful metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of the L&D function.
• Track new-hire retention and successful progression at key milestones including 90 days, six months, and one year.
• Measure employee ramp time, productivity progression, role advancement, and performance trends across training cohorts.
• Evaluate whether training is producing measurable improvement in activity, candidate generation, submissions, interviews, placements, sales performance, and other relevant role metrics.
• Identify common performance gaps and continuously adjust curriculum based on data, manager feedback, and employee results.
• Provide leadership with regular visibility into L&D outcomes, opportunities, and areas requiring additional focus.

What We Are Looking For

• Significant experience in Learning & Development, Sales Enablement, Training, Talent Development, or a related function.
• Demonstrated experience building training programs, not simply facilitating pre-existing content.
• Experience creating structured onboarding and employee-development programs within a fast-paced organization.
• Strong facilitation, presentation, coaching, and communication skills.
• Ability to translate the knowledge of experienced subject-matter experts into practical training that employees can actually use.
• Experience developing managers and future leaders.
• Comfortable working directly with employees through role plays, observation, call coaching, and hands-on development.
• Strong understanding of adult learning principles without being overly academic in approach.
• Ability to use performance data to determine whether training is changing behavior and improving results.
• Experience building and maintaining centralized learning content, preferably utilizing SharePoint or a similar platform.
• Highly organized and capable of building structure in an environment that is continuing to evolve.

Strongly Preferred

• Experience within staffing, recruiting, professional services, sales, or another high-volume performance-driven environment.
• Experience training recruiters, sales professionals, account managers, or other revenue-generating employees.
• Understanding of both recruiting and business-development workflows.
• Experience building leadership-development or emerging-leader programs.
• Experience working within a rapidly scaling, multi-office organization.

What Success Looks Like

Within the first 6–12 months, this person should have:

• Established a consistent Madison-Davis new-hire learning and development program.
• Created clear development pathways and competency expectations for key front-office positions.
• Built a repeatable Researcher development program that prepares employees to successfully transition into Recruiter and other appropriate career paths.
• Established regular training and coaching for existing employees.
• Created a formal approach for identifying and developing future leaders.
• Equipped managers with stronger tools for coaching and employee development.
• Launched a centralized SharePoint training and knowledge library.
• Established measurable L&D reporting around retention, ramp time, productivity, employee progression, and 90-day, six-month, and one-year success.
• Created an L&D function capable of scaling as Madison-Davis continues to add employees, teams, leaders, and offices.