Home Depot said Wednesday it expects to hire 80,000 seasonal workers nationally this year, including 2,250 new jobs in metro Atlanta.
The beefed up presence in the Atlanta region, the company’s home, comes as Home Depot sees online orders jump as more consumers use the Internet to either make purchases or to browse the company’s catalog and then head to locations for in-store purchases.
A typical Home Depot store, for example, has 35,000 SKUs — the code retailers use to identify a product — while the company’s website has up to 600,000 SKUs, said spokesman Stephen Holmes.
The hiring — there will be 10,000 more jobs nationwide than last year — is underway in anticipation of spring, the retailer’s busiest season. Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer, anticipates consumers will buy more this year as the economy slowly improves, especially in the housing industry, which has shown signs of a more consistent recovery in the last few months.
“Spring is always a special season for us, when we can offer employment opportunities for literally tens of thousands of Americans,” Tim Crow, Home Depot’s executive vice president for Human Resources, said in a release. “We find some of our best associates during our peak season, and many of them have built long, meaningful careers with us.”
For metro Atlanta, the seasonal hiring comes on the heels of jobs Home Depot has added or announced locally in the last year or so.
The company recently broke ground on a 1.1. million square-foot “fulfillment center” warehouse in McDonough for online orders. The facility will add 250 jobs.
And last October, Home Depot opened a contact center in Kennesaw that supports the retailer’s online business through sales support and customer service via email and online chat. The $24 million facility is expected to net 700 jobs by 2015.
Home Depot has 60 stores in metro Atlanta and 90 stores across the state. About 20,000 Georgians are employed by the company.
Job seekers can apply at http://www.careers.homedepot.com/.
About the Author
