Home Depot is a popular place to buy tools and a popular place to work. They have thousands of stores across the USA, Canada, and Mexico, turn over $83.176 billion (2015) and employ more than 371,000 people. But what we want to know is – does Home Depot hire felons?
And the answer is yes. Officially, Home Depot hire felons. They have signed up to Ban the Box so they won’t ask if you have a criminal record on the application form.
They will do a background check before they offer you the job but at least you get a chance to interview. If you impress them at the interview they will be more willing to overlook your record. But that will depend on your felony.
Research by FelonHire.com has found Home Depot does hire felons, and jobs for felons are available, but like most retailers it depends on the felony. Sex offenders or those convicted of a serious violent crime, theft or forgery are not likely to be hired.
A few people have told us that having any kind of record has been a problem but others have been hired. I guess sometimes it’s going to come down to the attitude of the local manager.
HOME DEPOT FELON FRIENDLY RATING
- Willingness to employ felons
- Availability of felon friendly jobs
- Treatment of felon employees
TOTAL
Home Depot has Banned the Box so you will not be asked about your felony on the application form. Our research shows that attitudes to hiring felons vary from store to store.
GETTING A JOB AT HOME DEPOT
You apply online for jobs at Home Depot. During the process you will be asked to complete an assessment test. This is basically to see whether you’re applying for the right job. Once you you pass this, you can then go on and submit your application.
These are a few things we know Home Depot look out for on your application form – so get one step ahead of the competition with these tips:
Spelling mistakes
This is one thing they use to decide who will and won’t go through to interview. If you’re not great at spelling get someone to check it for you.
Contact number
If you pass the application stage they will get in touch with you by phone to let you know. Make sure you’ve entered your phone number correctly and add a second number if there’s more than one way to get in touch with you. You don’t want to lose out on work just because you put your number down wrong.
Experience
If you have any experience at all working in retail or customer service make sure you let them know about it. Tell them what your job involved and how much you enjoyed it. Maybe you haven’t worked in retail but you have been a volunteer in a project where you helped people? They want people who enjoy helping customers.
Eager to learn
We know that Home Depot loves to see that you want to improve. (It’s not just Homes they want to help people improve!). People have told us that Home Depot like to see the words ‘Eager to learn’ on your application!
Home Depot Online Application Walk Through
Home Depot will email you to let you know they got your application. Then you just need to wait till they get back to you. (And when we say ‘wait’ we mean carry on looking for work at other places! )
If you want to know where you’re up to with your Home Depot application, you can log back in to your application and check on its progress. But to be honest, it doesn’t really give you much detail.
THE PRE-INTERVIEW PHONE CALL
If you are successful a hiring manager from Home Depot will arrange to call you for an informal chat. This is like a pre-interview interview. They just want to screen out people who would really not be suitable to work at a Home Depot.
What they are looking for are friendly, positive people who answer all the questions as well as they can.
They will ask you a bit about your background and your work experience. If you can avoid telling them about your felony conviction at this stage that would be great. It’s much better to talk about it face to face, where they can get to know you better. If you were inside for a few years, it’s not going to be easy to hide the big gap in your employment record so be prepared for this. And remember, Home Depot hire felons. Having a record should not stop you working there.
ENTRY LEVEL JOB INTERVIEW
Interviews for entry level jobs are usually one to one at the store.
You won’t be the only one going for the job so you’ll need to stand out from the crowd. You can do this by showing how much you want to work for Home Depot. There are a few questions they are likely to ask you so take the time now to prepare your answer.
Why do you want to work for Home Depot?
The right answer to this question is not “Because I need a job”. Do you love DIY? Do you enjoy talking to people about their home improvement projects? Find a reason why you specifically want to work for Home Depot.
Describe a time in your working past when you have worked as part of a team
They want to see that you can be an effective team player. Think about a time when you worked well with other people to solve a problem or meet a tight deadline.
Describe a time you displayed excellent customer service, and why
Can you think of an example where you went out of your way to help someone? Or you had to deal with a very difficult customer? What did you do? How did it help that person? What was the outcome? And then tell them how it made you feel to have done that. They want to know that you take pleasure in providing excellent service.
MANAGEMENT JOB INTERVIEW
People applying for a management job at Home Depot should expect to have more than one interview. They will ask you questions about how to deal with staff, coaching and customer service. They want to know how you would cope with certain situations.
Here are a couple of questions you are likely to be asked are:
• “Describe an occasion when you managed two or more conflicting members of staff. How did you deal with this?”
• “Describe an occasion when you had to deal with an aggressive customer”
ADVICE
When you go for an interview with Home Depot you need to show them that you care about working there.
Of course you need to be smartly dressed and presentable. You should have thought about the answers to some of the questions they will ask. Have a good reason why you particularly want to work at Home Depot. They want to see that you have a positive attitude.
It also helps to do your homework on the company. You can find out more about Home Depot and their company values here.
JOBS AT HOME DEPOT
There are quite a few different jobs available that Home Depot hire felons for, in stores all over the country. These include.
• Sales associate
• Lot associate
• Cashier
• Freight team installation sales associate
• Inventory control associate
• Transportation coordinator
• Administrative Assistant
• Customer service coordinator
• Stock associate
• Customer care supervisor
You can tell us what you think about Home Depot in the comments below. Our aim is to help you and as many people as we can to get work. If this article – Does Home Depot hire felons? – has been helpful to you we’d appreciate it if you could share it with your friends on social media. Thank you.