Home Depot, AARP form partnership

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SANTA ANA, Calif. — These days, the check-out clerk at The Home Depot may be a former CFO. The guy helping out in the garden department can be a retired CEO who decided to turn his hobby into a job.

Home Depot has formed a partnership with AARP, an organization for people aged 50 and up, to help fill some of the 35,000 new positions the home-improvement chain plans to have this year.

The partnership was launched in February, and new employees are now filling vacancies.

In an era when the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the number of workers will all but stop growing as the baby boomers start retiring in 2011, employers fearing a labor shortage seek ways to retain older workers and attract new ones.

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Tom Greeley is a former business-development manager who mixes paint at the Home Depot store in Santa Ana thanks to the partnership.

"I was watching way too much television," Greeley, 60, said of his life after accepting an early-retirement package from BASF Chemical Co. in 2000.

Drawing on his 23 years of experience working with insulation at BASF, Greeley decided to apply after reading about the partnership in an AARP magazine.

While the job pays "a lot less" than his former salary of $100,000, it gives Greeley an outlet for his home-improvement interest without the pressure of being a corporate executive.

Partnership first of kind

The partnership with Home Depot is the first of its kind, said Jim Seith, national director for the AARP Foundation Senior Community Service Employment Program. The foundation normally helps low-income seniors find employment, but the Home Depot partnership is the first time all seniors are targeted.

Interested seniors can go to an AARP chapter, a Home Depot store or online to apply.

Seith emphasized that the seniors have to meet the same qualifications as other candidates.

AARP chose to partner with Home Depot because the corporation proved to be committed to hiring seniors by training store managers and others in the value of having age 50-plus workers, Seith said.

For Home Depot, the partnership is part of a strategy to prepare for an anticipated labor shortage as the boomers retire, said Cindy Milburn, senior director of staffing.

More partnerships eyed

In addition to working with the AARP, Home Depot is evaluating similar partnerships with nonprofit organizations such as art institutes and government agencies such as the Department of Labor.

Home Depot has 1,700 stores and plans to open another 175 this year. For that, it's going to need to hire some 35,000 workers. Milburn said she hopes seniors fill many of the positions.

Some 11,000 people have applied through the AARP partnership so far, corporate officials said. About 75 percent of those have qualified for positions while 1,000 have been hired.

"We have found (older workers) terrific employees that bring leadership, skills and experience," Milburn said.