OLDER EMPLOYEES Home Depot, AARP build a work force

Some retirees are applying for the jobs to have an outlet for their hobby.
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SANTA ANA, Calif. -- These days, the checkout clerk at Home Depot can 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.
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.
Home Depot has formed a partnership with AARP 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 filling vacancies.
Back in the mix
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.
Retirement life also included golfing, ceramics and home improvements, but wasn't what Greeley had hoped for.
Drawing on his 23 years of experience working with insulation at BASF, Greeley decided to apply at Home Depot after reading about the partnership in an AARP magazine.
Although the job pays "a lot less" than the $100,000 per year he made at BASF, it gives Greeley an outlet for his home-improvement interest without the pressures of being a corporate executive.
"I'm not looking for a [corporate career] again," Greeley said. "I'm looking to meet expectations and go home at night."
Seeing the value
An increasing number of corporations are beginning to see the value of hiring seniors, said Gary Geyer, a retired advertising executive who runs 50plusMag.com, an online magazine for seniors.
"They realize that 50-plus workers aren't people who wear Depends and complain about their arthritis," Geyer said. "We don't think of ourselves as old. We think of ourselves as 40 years old."
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.