Home Depot (HD) Begins Spring Preparations, Ramps Up Hiring

The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) seems to be on its toes to make the most of the spring season, its busiest selling period, with plans to employ more than 80,000 workers in its stores and distribution centers. This Atlanta-based company has also launched the latest self-service tool wherein the job seekers are permitted to self-schedule in-person interviews and can select the most suitable interview appointment available after completion of the applications.

This tool, available 24/7 on any device, aids the company to hire the best employees to serve its customers. Additionally, the interested candidates might visit careers.homedepot.com/retailjobs for permanent and seasonal jobs. Notably, nearly 80% of the candidates have already benefited from the latest hiring tool, since the pilot initiated in November 2017.

Apart from hiring seasonal employees, Home Depot is introducing PocketGuide for imparting training to hired candidates. This helps chosen candidates to learn their job through a mobile app, when they are in the aisles, thus significantly reducing the needs for backroom training. For the spring season, this application has been rolled out to garden associates and is likely to expand to other departments through the rest of 2018.

These efforts clearly reflect Home Depot’s commitment toward introducing the latest technologies to conveniently suit its employees, job applicants and customers. Last year in this season, management rolled out a 15-minute application, Mobile Apply and Text-to-Apply facilities that reflected a 50% rise in job candidates.

Being a home improvement retailer, Home Depot waits for spring as customers usually shop their gardens, lawns and homes related-products during this season. Moreover, a recovering housing market will act as a catalyst. Another home-improvement retailer, Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE:LOW) has also announced plans to hire more than 53,000 seasonal staffs to make the spring season more profitable.

Stock’s Performance

Home Depot’s five-year long trend of beating earnings estimates led it to outperform the industry in the past year. While this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock has surged 30.5%, the industry gained 26.4%.

The company is slated to report fourth-quarter fiscal 2017 results on Feb 20.

Looking For More Home Improvement Stocks? Check These

Other favorably-placed stocks in the same industry include Beacon Roofing Supply, Inc. (NASDAQ:BECN) and Builders FirstSource, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLDR) carrying a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Beacon Roofing with a long-term earnings growth rate of 18.8% has delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 12.3% in the last four quarters.

Builders FirstSource has pulled off an average positive earnings surprise of 58.6% in the trailing four quarters.

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