Chapter 17 They Can Do It! You Can Help!: A Look at Talent Practices at The Home Depot Leslie W. Joyce The Home Depot is the world's second largest retailer. With revenues in excess of $90 billion, it has the distinction of being the number one home improvement retailer in the world. Founded in 1979, The Home Depot has gained recognition as the fastest growing retailer to hit sales of $40 billion, $50 billion, $60 billion, and so on. At just 29 years old, The Home Depot is already an American icon, and the business is growing globally. The company began in the United States and grew into Canada, then Mexico, and most recently into China. The Case for Talent Management On average, The Home Depot places approximately 17,000 leaders into positions each year. This includes placements as first-line supervisors and continues all the way to placing executive vice presidents. Notably, more than 80 percent of leadership placements are internal promotions, and the vast majority of those placements are into key frontline management roles interfacing directly with customers every day. With a demand pipeline like that, The Home Depot has to take talent management very seriously. Vacancies at the supervisor, assistant manager, and store manager levels are particularly important since these individuals have the greatest impact on the engagement level of The Home Depot's nearly 300,000 associates and on the shopping experience of billons of customers. In addition to placing a large number of leaders, The Home Depot hires a significant number of hourly retail associates every year. Due to geographic dispersion, seasonality, international expansion, attrition, and new store growth, The Home Depot must source and hire tens of thousands of retail associates each year. This is especially true as the company prepares for its busiest season, spring, when sourcing and hiring can be at a fever pitch. It has created multiple and diverse channels of entry into the organization and developed dedicated programs that build leadership and functional skills. The company works hard to attract top talent and then commits to supporting that talent while they prepare for upcoming leadership roles. This intense focus is the result of many things. Top among them are: · •Embedding the enduring importance of human capital to corporate success · •Internalizing the importance of engaged associates in creating a superior customer experience · •Experiencing unprecedented growth in challenging employment markets—our move to more rural stores with lower revenue volumes and other operational challenges · •Acknowledging significant changes in workforce and consumer demographics · •Understanding that talented associates tend to leave leaders, not companies, and therefore the competency and preparedness of leaders is paramount to ongoing success This case study describes key talent channels that have been developed to meet the retail hiring needs and examines some of the leadership developme.

1. Chapter 17 They Can Do It! You Can Help!: A Look at Talent
Practices at The Home Depot
Leslie W. Joyce
The Home Depot is the world's second largest retailer. With
revenues in excess of $90 billion, it has the distinction of being
the number one home improvement retailer in the world.
Founded in 1979, The Home Depot has gained recognition as
the fastest growing retailer to hit sales of $40 billion, $50
billion, $60 billion, and so on. At just 29 years old, The Home
Depot is already an American icon, and the business is growing
globally. The company began in the United States and grew into
Canada, then Mexico, and most recently into China.
The Case for Talent Management
On average, The Home Depot places approximately 17,000
leaders into positions each year. This includes placements as
first-line supervisors and continues all the way to placing
executive vice presidents. Notably, more than 80 percent of
leadership placements are internal promotions, and the vast
majority of those placements are into key frontline management
roles interfacing directly with customers every day. With a
demand pipeline like that, The Home Depot has to take talent
management very seriously. Vacancies at the supervisor,
assistant manager, and store manager levels are particularly
important since these individuals have the greatest impact on
the engagement level of The Home Depot's nearly 300,000
associates and on the shopping experience of billons of
customers.
In addition to placing a large number of leaders, The Home
Depot hires a significant number of hourly retail associates
every year. Due to geographic dispersion, seasonality,
international expansion, attrition, and new store growth, The
Home Depot must source and hire tens of thousands of retail
associates each year. This is especially true as the company
prepares for its busiest season, spring, when sourcing and hiring

2. can be at a fever pitch.
It has created multiple and diverse channels of entry into the
organization and developed dedicated programs that build
leadership and functional skills. The company works hard to
attract top talent and then commits to supporting that talent
while they prepare for upcoming leadership roles. This intense
focus is the result of many things. Top among them are:
· •Embedding the enduring importance of human capital to
corporate success
· •Internalizing the importance of engaged associates in creating
a superior customer experience
· •Experiencing unprecedented growth in challenging
employment markets—our move to more rural stores with lower
revenue volumes and other operational challenges
· •Acknowledging significant changes in workforce and
consumer demographics
· •Understanding that talented associates tend to leave leaders,
not companies, and therefore the competency and preparedness
of leaders is paramount to ongoing success
This case study describes key talent channels that have been
developed to meet the retail hiring needs and examines some of
the leadership development programs that have been created to
meet the leadership talent needs of the company. The
information provided will be summary descriptions of actions
and programs and not the design level of detail, to honor the
proprietary and confidential nature of the talent processes.
Talent Channels
Early on, The Home Depot recognized that talent was the key
competitive differentiator in a rapidly growing company that
built its reputation and business case on knowledgeable
associates, problem solving, and superior customer service. It
would need a unique combination of service skills and product
knowledge to meet and exceed the customers’ expectations. As
the company grew, the pool of talent with those high-level
capabilities got smaller as the company's demand for them
grew. In addition, The Home Depot realized it would need very

3. capable leaders to inspire and engage very capable talent.
To those ends, the company has created multiple talent
channels, each with a specific purpose or designated for a
specific talent segment. Talent channels—the ways in which
people are attracted and recruited to a company—include
traditional sources like print media and job boards, as well as
more creative sources like hiring partnerships and strategic
alliances. The lesson to be learned from The Home Depot is that
the more channels you have, the more likely your organization
can source and hire talented people. Examples of talent
channels include print, radio, and TV media; job boards;
recruiting firms, partnerships, and strategic alliances; on-
campus recruiting; and career websites. The Home Depot has
been creative and innovative in a number of places, specifically
in using hiring partnerships to create focused channels to key
talent segments. It is through partnerships that The Home Depot
is able to:
· •Identify capabilities that are key to the success of the
customer experience
· •Determine the most productive channels for each talent
segment
· •Establish formal relationships with organizations or entities
that serve as contact points to large numbers of candidates
meeting the talent profile
On the leadership pipeline side, The Home Depot has many
processes for managing and optimizing its leadership talent,
including these key processes:
· •Dedicated leadership pipeline programs that bring external
talent into the company and accelerate their readiness to lead
· •World-class development programs for High Potentials that
invest in internal talent with the clear capability to lead at the
executive level
· •A comprehensive, mandatory leadership curriculum that
provides a road map for success in the first six months of a
leader's job
· •Annual 360-degree assessments for all leaders at the manager

4. level and above to provide timely feedback for improvement
and to ensure alignment to the leadership expectations of the
company
· •A semiannual enterprisewide talent review process that
ensures that all talent is reviewed and attended to in a
purposeful manner
This case study focuses on the leadership pipeline programs,
since these programs have been an essential element in
preparing new hires to lead effectively.
Creating Successful Hiring Partnerships
The Home Depot hires large numbers of associates each year.
Because these associates are the heart of the customer
experience, it is imperative that they are knowledgeable and
service oriented. They must also be plentiful, and that is where
the challenge comes in. In 2001, The Home Depot was opening
a new store about every 24 hours, and on average, a new store
requires 150 to 200 new associates at grand opening.
The workforce planning process made it clear that reliable,
sustainable pipelines of qualified candidates needed to be
created. The company had learned a few things well: (1) older
workers were proving more dependable and more service
oriented than younger workers; (2) new associates with military
backgrounds assimilated quickly, brought broad skill sets, and
progressed more quickly than others; and (3) stores were
struggling with reflecting and effectively serving the growing
Hispanic customer base. These realizations led to a key
decision: to establish hiring partnerships with organizations
whose members or clients fit this talent profile, and through
these partnerships establish The Home Depot as a preferred
employer, one that members and clients considered first, above
other options. These partnerships were targeted at two primary
areas:
· •Governmental organizations like the Department of Labor,
whose local community-based outreach programs,
workforce development organizations, and job training centers
are a great source of local talent, and the Department of

5. Defense, known for creating diverse, skilled workforces from
which thousands of highly capable, vital people retire every
year
· •Nonprofit organizations, like the AARP (American
Association of Retired Persons), whose members represent
capable workforces that might be looking for flexible but
meaningful work during retirement and community-based
workforce advancement organizations, like the National Council
of La Raza (NCLR) and the Hispanic Association of Colleges
and Universities (HACU) whose constituents reflect members of
the Hispanic community who may be underrepresented in other
organizations and whose mission is to create opportunity for
their constituents
These partnerships allow The Home Depot to reach out to the
communities in which we operate, and provide the company
with a broad range of qualified candidates with diverse
backgrounds.
The Home Depot's first partnership, with the Department of
Labor, was established in 2002. The primary purpose of this
partnership was to identify The Home Depot as a key employer
and expand the company's reach and approach to recruiting
talent from a local to a national level. The second major
partnership was the exclusive relationship created between The
Home Depot and the AARP. The primary purpose of this
partnership was to gain access to the millions of members of
AARP, to make them aware of the incredible opportunities
available at The Home Depot, and to underscore how valuable
their skills and life experiences were in our high service
environment. It was with this relationship that The Home Depot
really began to develop its employment brand and articulate the
value it placed on experience and the kind of environment that
associates could expect to find when working for The Home
Depot.
Next came Operation Career Front. At The Home Depot, we feel
our support of the military sets the standard for corporate
America. It is our belief that we must honor our military heroes

6. where it matters most, not only in our thoughts and prayers, but
also in our business practices, human resource policies,
corporate giving, and volunteer efforts. In 2003, The Home
Depot hired 10,000 veterans.
In September 2004, The Home Depot formed a joint hiring
initiative with the U.S. Departments of Defense, Labor, and
Veterans Affairs to provide career opportunities for America's
military who are interested in transferring their unique skills,
knowledge, and abilities into a successful second career. This
partnership gave The Home Depot unprecedented access to
thousands of members of the military as they began preparing
for civilian employment when their military enlistments ended.
This talent pool is rich in skills key to home improvement: areas
like plumbing, electrical, building materials, and maintenance.
It also was a great source of leadership talent, as we discuss
below. In 2004 the company hired more than 16,000 former
military personnel and far exceeded that number in 2005, having
hired more than 13,000 by the end of September that year—a
successful partnership by any measure.
In 2004, The Home Depot became a corporate partner with the
Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR) and
immediately began exploring ways to develop unique
programming with its coalition partners. In February 2005, The
Home Depot formed a hiring partnership with four of the
country's leading Hispanic organizations: ASPIRA Association,
Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU),
National Council of La Raza (NCLR), and SER–Jobs for
Progress National. The Home Depot works with these
organizations and their strong network of local offices and
contacts to recruit candidates for full-time and part-time
positions across the country. This was the first time ASPIRA,
HACU, NCLR, and SER worked with a corporate partner on one
hiring initiative.
The Hispanic partnership was a key element in the company's
diversity strategy and a clear commitment to ensuring the
company made progress in its ability to meet the needs of the

7. growing Hispanic customer population and reflect the diversity
of the communities in which it operates. By working closely
with the chief diversity officer, the staffing team led the
creation of the Hispanic Advisory Board. This board comprised
a number of senior leaders of leading Hispanic community
organizations who agreed to work together with The Home
Depot to establish relationships that would open The Home
Depot up as a viable and valued employer in the Hispanic
community. The board came together annually at the company's
Atlanta headquarters to attend the Hispanic Summit to identify
and discuss issues key to accelerating progress and building
deeper partnerships.
So a clear business-focused talent acquisition strategy is a key
starting point. From there it is a matter of determining where
the talent is and how to get unique, exclusive, and visible
access to that talent by creating new access channels before
your competitors do.
The Home Depot places nearly 17,000 leaders into positions
each year. Most of those are internal placements of talented
people already employed by The Home Depot. One important
source of highly regarded internal talent is through established
leadership pipeline programs.
Creating Successful Leadership Pipeline Programs
For the purpose of this chapter, leadership pipeline programs
are defined as those development programs designed
specifically to hire and develop new external talent, who, on
program completion, are placed in a leadership role with the
company. Pipeline programs differ from other leadership
development programs in that participants in pipeline programs
are typically newly and externally hired individuals, who are
targeted to fill upcoming and anticipated vacant entry-level to
midlevel leadership positions in a couple of years.
The Home Depot has committed to leadership pipeline programs
as an effective channel for developing high-potential talent into
new leaders. In support of that commitment, they have
developed and sustained multiple programs that hire new or

8. soon-to-be graduates from the country's top colleges and
universities into multiyear development programs that prepare
these highly capable young people to take and succeed in what
is often their first leadership role.
In addition, The Home Depot has taken what is a successful
formula for early-career entrants and applied it to those who
may be successful midcareer professionals looking to make a
change in profession. In this instance, the targeted talent pools
are successful professionals with many years of experience and
demonstrated leadership proficiency who come to the company
as a proven professional but without the requisite retail industry
experience.
Two of the most successful and longest-running pipeline
programs are the Internal Audit Leadership Program (ILP),
which is focused on new career entrants, and the Store
Leadership Program (SLP), which is focused on successful
midcareer professionals looking to make a change. These two
programs have important commonalities:
· •Multi-hurdle, intense selection processes
· •Cross-disciplinary rotational assignments of a duration
sufficient to make a contribution to the business unit
· •Centralized classroom learning as a cohort
· •Unprecedented access to senior business leaders through
multiple forums
These elements are widely regarded as the key success factors
of The Home Depot's pipeline programs.
Internal Audit Leadership Program
This is an early-career entrant program, targeted at high-
performing college graduates with degrees in accounting,
process improvement and engineering, business administration,
and consulting. They may come to the program with two to four
years of work experience. The intent is to build internal
business consultants capable of leading projects focused on
optimizing business processes and ensuring compliance.
On completion of an extremely rigorous selection process,
which includes well-defined program qualifications, interviews,

9. and an assessment center that measures competencies core to
leading at The Home Depot, participants are selected to enter
the two-year program. They progress through the program as a
cohort and graduate together at the same time. Key elements of
the highly structured program are (1) rotational assignments in
four critical business functions, which include operations,
finance, IT, merchandising, operations, supply chain, and so on;
(2) hands-on leadership experience in field operations, (3) high-
visibility, team-based projects; and (4) presentation of results
and recommendations to the executive leadership team.
Successful completion of the program results in placement into
manager-level business consulting roles in the internal audit
function as well as other areas of the business as needed. This
program, which began around 2001, is one of the longest-
running pipeline programs at The Home Depot It has an
impressive placement rate in excess of 90 percent, and many of
its graduates continue to progress through levels of increasing
responsibility while maintaining their connection to the program
that brought them to The Home Depot.
The Store Leadership Program
The Store Leadership Program (SLP) places individuals who are
dynamic and driven with a strong foundation of strategic and
technical skills on the fast track to coveted store manager
positions. Candidates typically have up to ten years of previous
work experience and a demonstrated record of leadership and
business acumen.
Since the inception of the program in 2002, the company has
enrolled almost 1,300 individuals, many of them former junior
military officers or U.S. Military Academy graduates. Data
suggest that after completing the program, graduates are as
successful in their store manager roles as others with many
more years of experience with the company.
The SLP program is a two-year rotational program. As with ILP,
a rigorous assessment center is the foundation for selection into
the program, and thousands apply for approximately 100
available positions. There are three primary rotations:

10. operations, merchandising, and assistant store manager. In
addition, there are centralized learning forums placed
strategically at key points in the program to reinforce the on-
the-job learning that occurs, as well as to stretch participants’
thinking in areas of leadership and strategy. On graduation,
participants are deemed “store manager ready” and await
assignment to their new store. There are comprehensive
processes in place to continue to support new graduates through
their first year in the role.
SLP has been a successful program with consistent placement
percentages and an impressive promotion acceleration profile
for participants. It has also been a great learning experience for
how to move new leaders into an existing leadership population
and how to build a programmed experience that really builds
work skills that can be immediately applied.
Lessons Learned
The lessons learned from innovating are often the most
powerful. Here are some of the valuable lessons The Home
Depot has learned so far about the important areas of talent
channels and pipeline programs. These lessons focus on the
elements that can differentiate you from other employers.
Talent Channels
· 1. The more channels, the better. Think critically about where
the key talent segments are and find ways to get to them. The
more channels you have and the more comprehensive your
strategy, then the more likely talent continues to flow toward
you, even in tight markets.
· 2. Clear branding is the key to acceptance. It is important to
have a clear, differentiated message on what it means to work
for your organization and how it differs from your competitors.
· 3. Partnerships are key differentiators. Partnerships can unlock
enormous pools of qualified talent while lending immediate
credibility to the employer. Creating the partnerships first,
before others see the opportunity, provides competitive
advantage.
· 4. Success starts when the associate is hired. The Home Depot

11. has learned that the extent to which an associate is prepared,
with knowledge and skill, to do their job is a key predictor of
associate retention. Therefore, the resources expended to source
and hire great talent are supported by the company's
commitment to associate development. Once hired into The
Home Depot, associates are provided with a comprehensive
orientation and onboarding process and a learning curriculum
built specifically for their particular role.
Lessons Learned—Pipeline Programs
· 1. Get buy-in on the business need for the program. It is
critically important that leaders at all levels of the organization
believe in and can articulate the business need that the program
fulfills. These are large investments, often in employees with
very little tenure, which can create resentment among existing
employees.
· 2. Do not make the participants too special. Program
participants are often afforded experiences that are not, or were
not, available to incumbents. These include things as small as
different work spaces, upgraded computers, and the ability to
travel, to larger things, like access to coaches and mentors,
exclusive learning opportunities and events, and exposure to
senior executives. The more that program participants are
treated as “special,” the greater the likelihood of resentment
among peers as they move into the new roles on program
completion. And these are the peers whose support and
assistance they will need to succeed. Also, it is important for
program participants to experience a “real workplace” with real
challenges, constraints, and barriers that must be overcome or
else, at program completion, they will enter a workplace they
have never experienced.
· 3. Listen and respond to naysayers. Pipeline programs are
often big investments with high hopes and even higher
visibility. This can make it difficult to hear constructive
criticism and intervene early and appropriately for fear that
changes may be seen as failures of design or commitment. Hear
what people are saying, and listen objectively. Respond in a

12. way that adds to the credibility of the program.
· 4. Give the programs time to work. By nature, pipeline
programs are long-term investments. The impact horizon of a
program does not even begin until the conclusion of the first
cohort of participants, at which time there may be multiple
cohorts in play, so setting realistic expectations for return on
investment and overall business impact is critical.
· 5. Invest in the talent you already have. This may be the most
valuable lesson learned. New programs and new talent are
always exciting, and participants in programs are easy to focus
on; however, to do this at the exclusion of existing internal
talent is a potentially fatal mistake. Make certain that high-
quality development opportunities are available for existing
talent just as they are for program participants. Do not create a
culture of “haves” and “have nots.” Remember that leadership
program participants will eventually be coworkers with
incumbents, and those incumbents may hold the keys to their
success.
The Home Depot's approach to talent management has
significant strengths:
· 1.It ensures rich pipelines of leaders at all levels of the
company.
· 2.It ensures that talent is guided, challenged, and supported.
· 3.It allows great talent to try a variety of roles and functions
before making a career choice, resulting in a higher likelihood
of true engagement with that career choice.
· 4.It encourages early intervention when issues arise around
performance or organization fit.
· 5.It provides an opportunity for key leaders in the company
to preview talent before making a commitment to hire. This
allows a stronger connection to the new employee and greater
certainty about the person's interests, abilities, and success.
As with all processes in organizations that are the size and
scope of The Home Depot, there are challenges as well. Among
them are funding, staffing, and managing the programs
themselves and the ability to ensure placement of program

13. participants:
· •Funding. Two choices typically exist in terms of funding
pipeline programs: Do you fund it centrally or do you distribute
costs to the business functions that participate in the program or
receive program graduates? With the decision to centrally fund
the pipeline programs, which I believe is an essential element of
success, come the benefits of ensuring adequate funding and
program quality year after year, controlling costs throughout the
program, allocating cost properly to the highest-valued
activities, and making decisions quickly. These benefits are
accompanied by the challenges of a single, large, centralized
budget that makes it a very simple cost-reduction target in times
of cost control.
· •Decentralizing the budget. In my opinion this puts the
program at risk from many sources, the first of which is the
individual unit operator's choice of whether to invest at all,
which makes consistent budgeting from year to year a
challenge.
· •Staffing and managing the programs. Programs of this size
and complexity take infrastructure to succeed. Programs must
be managed, activities and assignments arranged, and
learning events designed and executed. Participants must have
consistent oversight and mentorship to navigate the organization
and a consistent contact point for support and intervention in
the event of ongoing struggles. Shortchanging infrastructure
will lead to program degradation and participant disengagement.
Conclusion
The Home Depot is committed to a superior customer
experience and understands the essential role of talented staff
and extraordinary leaders in making that commitment an
everyday reality. Significant strides have been made to take
advantage of the riches available through all the talent sources
available. Many of these efforts have worked out beautifully,
and some have been valuable lessons in what to do differently.
In learning, there is always progress.