Photo: The Home Depot
Will faster job offers help Home Depot recruit the 100K+ workers it needs now?
The Home Depot is seeking more than 100,000 new associates ahead of the chain’s spring season, its busiest of the year, at a time when finding staff for stores and warehouses has become more challenging for retailers across the country.
The retailer is staging the hiring initiative at a time when U.S. employers are looking to fill 10.9 million jobs, according to a survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported by The Washington Post. Nearly five percent of retail workers quit their jobs in December.
The home improvement giant is counting on a variety of factors to appeal to prospective employees including a quick turnaround on offers to jobseekers. Home Depot is encouraging those interested in jobs to apply at careers.homedepot.com. It said earlier this week that it has a new and accelerated hiring process that would result in job offers in as little as one day from applying.
The chain is touting what it sees as its strengths as an employer, including convenient commutes. Home Depot has stores and warehouses within 10 miles of the majority of the nation’s population.
Management is also offering flexibility with full- and part-time positions in a variety of jobs including customer service/sales, freight, merchandising, store support and warehouse. The company on Feb. 16 will host its Virtual Spring Career Day to help those looking for work to identify the right jobs. The event will feature speakers who will share their experiences working for the chain, including Crystal Hanlon, who began as a cashier at the chain and worked her way up to president of Home Depot’s northern division.
“In today’s climate, jobseekers are shopping for the best opportunity,” said Eric Schelling, the retailer’s vice president of global talent acquisition. “At The Home Depot, they’ll find a company that offers much more than a job and a paycheck. Jobseekers will find a values-based company that invests in them with our success sharing bonus program and gives them the opportunity to grow, similar to the approximately 90 percent of our store leaders who started as hourly associates. Additionally, jobseekers will also find upskilling programs that teach and expose them to new skills in other functions like software development, cyber security, data science, marketing, supply chain and finance.”
Discussion Questions
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Will quicker turnarounds on job offers help Home Depot bring more job seekers on board? What do you see as the best practices for employee recruitment in the current labor market?
Poll
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Recruiting at this scale will take every trick in the book – quicker turnaround on offers is part of it. With unemployment levels as low as they’ve been in decades, every employer will have to pull out all the stops to attract and retain the talent they need. Recruiting at a large scale like Home Depot has to is especially challenging. Employers really need to play offense by showcasing how they are the employer of choice. Pay, programs like college tuition and flexible work schedules should be emphasized.
Accelerating the speed of job offers is smart, but the overall work environment and perks/benefits are most important to attracting new employees. Home Depot is focusing on a plethora of financial and skills-based benefits that should help in the recruitment process.
Quicker turnaround on offers will certainly help but it’s not the only thing that matters to prospective candidates. The full array of benefits, pay, culture and the opportunity for new roles, new challenges and new learning will be highly valued, especially if there is a continuing education (GED, Associate’s Degree and Bachelor’s Degree) involved. Leveraging executives like Crystal Hanlon who rose through the ranks from entry level is a smart tactic that should amplify Home Depot’s proposition to interested candidates.
For candidates shopping their services around — a quick turnaround for offers, I suspect, will help more people choose Home Depot when they have a couple options available to them. Not sure it will attract more applicants, that requires attention to working conditions and benefits.
It’s funny, there are supposed to be a gazillion open jobs out there but I am hearing from those seeking them that once they apply, they rarely hear back. Or it takes months. Home Depot is smart to offer a quick turnaround, it’s good for the company and it’s good for the applicants. If any company can make this work it’s Home Depot.
Quicker responses will help but, at the end of the day, it’s about pay, culture, perks, and growth.
This approach should definitely help Home Depot differentiate itself from others who have an exhausting — and excessively elongated — process. Three things to consider, however: 1.) Is the offer attractive and compelling to applicants; 2.) Are the potential candidates qualified (and motivated) to accept quickly; and 3.) Will Home Depot position itself to onboard this talent quickly and equip them to be solid contributors?
Best practices for recruitment begins with accurate, transparent job expectations and an appropriate compensation structure that inspires applicants to engage with the process. Speedier turnarounds of offers/acceptance will be a key factor for Home Depot as they seek to fill their labor gaps.
One problem that came up during the last Store Operations Council meeting was potential employers not getting back to applicants in a timely way, or at all. If THD can make quick decisions on applicants, it’s going to win.
Streamlining and speeding up the hiring process will absolutely improve recruitment – especially given the competition from gig economy companies who make job offers on the spot! Hopefully the benefits, career path and working conditions will improve retention.
Retailers have under-invested in hiring and HR tech for years. Bravo to Home Depot for investing in the hiring and on-boarding processes.
Uggh. That’s right, I said it. Home Depot needs to get back to having professionals on the sales floor, not just bodies. Yup, that’s hard. Nope, that’s not impossible. Shoppers need sales help, people who know which nail to use and what paint to buy. What if Home Depot paid for apprentice programs or fostered young tradesman/woman talent? What if, like the military and Starbucks, they paid for education, only Home Depot would pay for trade school? How about Uber-like scheduling of on-demand shifts for trades folks between jobs of their own? Retailers need to think differently to get different results.
On its own, faster job offers are unlikely to solve the talent acquisition problem of Home Depot or any other retailer. There is simply a lot of competition out there and workers can be choosy. However, when you look at the whole package that Home Depot has put together, they deserve to be successful. Workers want to be recognized and valued, and by going the extra mile to talk to them about what opportunities there are, what might suit them best and flexibility in the nature of the work they are going to get some serious interest.
No longer can retailers look at the workforce in retail and warehousing as a huge pool of labor they can pick up and let go. Retailers have to invest in them, work hard to acquire them and then even harder to keep them. This is good for retail, good for workers and ultimately good for consumers, as we are likely to see more long-term workers who are properly trained and dedicated to the role they are in.
Fast turnarounds can’t hurt. The labor market is competitive. Pay and benefits will be important. Benefits, by the way, are more than medical, dental, etc.
The simple answer to the first question. Will quicker turnaround on job offers help bring job seekers on board? YES. It will also help become an employer of choice even if the answer is not to hire the person; if they get back to the ones they will not hire. Getting back is something most employers are not doing.
When it comes to best practices for employment recruiting in today’s market, start by changing your job posting so that you begin by talking about why potential employees would be interested/want to work for your company before you spell out the job qualification.