Walmart sees hidden tech talent in parents returning to work

The war for tech talent is fiercer than ever. Walmart rarely competes with giants like Google when it comes to lavish perks, but it hopes to stay competitive by opening the door wider for parents returning to work.

Starting in September, Walmart’s technology division – Walmart Labs – will offer training for workers looking to restart their careers after taking time off to care for children or a family member. In partnership with non-profit Path Forward, Walmart will offer 16-week internships to roughly 30 workers who have taken at least two years off for caregiving. Interns who complete the program and impress the company will be offered full-time positions within Walmart Labs in either San Bruno or Sunnyvale, Calif.

“This is a pipeline of talent that often gets overlooked,” said VP of Human Resources Bobbie Grafeld. “You have highly-skilled, highly-intelligent people who, by their own accord, have chosen to take a step back.” 

Of course, 30 interns barely dents Walmart Labs’ 5,000-person employee base, not to mention the 1.5 million workers Walmart’s retail arm employs in the U.S. Yet Grafeld said the hope is eventually to scale the program to all of Walmart Labs and e-commerce divisions across the country.

The partnership with Path Forward was also inspired by a major hiring effort by Walmart Labs and Walmart e-commerce in the Bay Area and beyond. Hiring is up more than 100% over the last two years at Walmart Labs, with nearly 50% of employees working in engineering, according to LinkedIn data. The retail giant is looking to onboard an additional 150 data scientists, product managers, software engineers and more for its Sunnyvale and San Bruno locations — as well as a couple thousand more employees for its e-commerce unit at large — within the next six months.

While Walmart is a visible brand in the world of retail, the largest private employer is still establishing itself as a tech employer amongst software engineers, designers and more. As it competes with the likes of Amazon, Google and Facebook for key talent, Grafeld said the company relies on its massive footprint to attract the best and brightest.

“When people come here [for interviews,] we really have that conversation about scale and scope,” Grafeld said. “They have the ability to work on really meaningful things that can push this company even further ahead.” 

Walmart does not separate out Walmart Labs in its employee diversity report, which shows that roughly 32% of executives and senior managers are female. Yet Graefeld acknowledged that the internship program was created, in part, to diversify the tech arm’s current employee base. While both men and women take time off work for caregiving, the average family caregiver in the United States is a 49-year-old white woman, according to AARP.

Advances in technology leading to rapid changes in jobs is another reason why Walmart is focusing on re-onboarding opportunities for caregivers looking to come back to work. By 2030, nearly 15% of the global workforce may need to switch jobs, according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute. In that same time period, 75 million to 375 million workers will change occupation categories and another 400 to 800 million could be displaced by automation entirely.

“Technology moves at such a fast pace,” said Graefeld, who took six years off from work to care for her family. “Being out of it for three to five years, those skills can atrophy.”

Does your employer help workers looking to re-enter the workforce after taking time off? Share your insights in the comments below.