Building talent: How The Home Depot Mexico redefined retail recruitment

The Home Depot is the world's largest and most important home improvement products chain, with operations in the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

In Mexico, it operates 140 stores and has more than 17,000 associates who are proud to be part of the great Orange Blood family, delivering the best shopping experience to customers both in physical stores and through its online store.

With large-scale operations, Home Depot Mexico understood the importance of optimizing its hiring and recruitment processes to ensure smooth store operations and stay competitive.

The average time to fill a vacancy was 13 days, which directly impacted daily operations and the internal team's experience.

Additionally, HR teams were overwhelmed with manual tasks and lacked analytical tools to improve their recruitment strategy.

Home Depot Mexico chose to implement Emi, an AI-powered platform designed to optimize high-volume recruitment.

Results across 20 stores:Reduction in time-to-hire from 13 to 4 days per candidate, representing a 69% reduction in time-to-hire.Savings of 3.8 hours of operational work per hire through automation.Implementation of real-time reporting for more informed decisions.

The success of the initial phase led to the expansion of Emi across all 140 Home Depot Mexico stores."Before, we didn't have many analytics, but now with the platform you can generate tons of reports (...) to make the next decisions: What are we going to adjust within the recruitment processes?" — Rocio Martinez, Head of Talent Attraction

With the implementation of Emi, Home Depot Mexico achieved:A 78% reduction in the number of "Red Flag stores" (with more than 5 vacancies), going from 23 to just 5 stores on average.Faster vacancy posting and candidate interaction, improving the experience for both applicants and the internal team.Improved quality and speed of hires."Without a doubt, Emi is the best AI platform and I believe it was the best decision Home Depot made. The impact has been very positive. We had 100% adoption." — Erika Martinez, HR Leader at Home Depot Mexico

Business impact

The Home Depot Mexico experience demonstrates how artificial intelligence can transform the future of recruitment."What I value most is the human quality of the Emi team. From day one, they were always attentive to our needs (...). They always adapt to what we need in our operations." — Rocio Martinez, Head of Talent Attraction

By reducing time, costs, and freeing up resources, HR teams can focus on higher-value strategic tasks while ensuring more efficient and accurate operations.

Without a doubt, artificial intelligence is transforming the future of recruitment, and Home Depot is at the forefront.