By JOAN E. SOLSMAN

The spring selling season is like Christmas for home-improvement retailers, and this year, Christmas is coming early.

Government data show December and January were the warmest such months in the contiguous U.S. since 2006, creating the most inviting climate for home improvement since the onset of the recession. The mild winter sets the sector up for a key test of underlying demand.

When Home Depot Inc. reports fiscal fourth-quarter results on Tuesday, it will preview homeowners’ willingness to spend on sprucing up homes, tending gardens and renovating rooms this year, when an improving job market and hopeful housing signs are on their side.

Comprising November through January, the period is seasonally the weakest for home improvement and is typically marked by sales of snow shovels and the like. This year, exterior paint and live plants are just as likely to crop up among popular merchandise.

That is because the U.S. is having one of the warmest, least snowy winters on record. Last month was the fourth-warmest January going back to 1895 and had the third-lowest snow cover going back to the ’60s, government data show.

The mild climes were bad for apparel stores and sporting-goods purveyors, which were stuck with boots, coats and snow-sport equipment. But companies like Home Depot and Lowe’s Cos., the smaller rival that reports next week, are enjoying an early start to spring selling.

Weather has driven January demand for exterior paint up 31% in the Southeast from last year, estimates researcher .Planalytics Inc. When it comes to live plants, “you can’t keep them in stores in the southern tier” because demand is so strong, Planalytics President Scott Bernhardt said.

Signs are also good at companies that supply the likes of Home Depot, the biggest home-improvement retailer in the U.S. by sales. Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. said point-of-sale figures were up more than one-fifth in the first five weeks of the year. The maker of lawn-and-garden products highlighted strong increases in Texas and Florida, two key early-season markets.

Granted, the felicitous weather also can hinder home-improvement retailers because of lost sales of winter merchandise. Planalytics estimates weather has driven down demand 24% in the snow-removal industry in the current season from a year earlier.

However, wintriness can damp traffic, too. A year earlier, record-breaking snow in some areas generated demand for snow throwers and ice salts, but Home Depot said the storms were an overall negative as shoppers stayed home.

Meanwhile, the job market is on the upswing. The Labor Department’s unemployment rate hit its lowest level in nearly three years last month and has improved for five months straight.

The housing market, though still weak, has hopeful signs: Home builders’ sentiment rose to the highest level in nearly five years in February. Anticipation of a housing recovery has driven up shares of Home Depot and Lowe’s, analysts say. Home Depot stock is up about 24% in the last three months and Lowe’s, 18%. That compares with a 12% gain in the S&P 500.

In Home Depot’s results, momentum in the average ticket, sales per square foot and the volume of high-ticket items will gauge underlying home-improvement demand. Home Depot’s average ticket was up 2.6% in the year-earlier period, after it had fallen for four years. Sales per square foot rose 4.1%, and tickets of $900 or more were up 9.6%.

The amount of acceleration in metrics like average ticket should hint as to how much homeowners are buying into job market and housing recovery—and how much they’re snapping up snapdragons when they would normally be scraping ice off of windshields.

Wal-Mart Is Looking

To Regain Momentum

Has Wal-Mart Stores Inc. gotten its mojo back?

The answer to that question—and its resulting consequences for Wal-Mart’s myriad competitors in the supermarket, pharmacy and warehouse-store businesses—is one investors and analysts will be trying hard to discern Tuesday when the world’s largest retailer reports fourth-quarter earnings.

Wal-Mart broke the longest slump in company history last October when it reported its first sales increase in 10 quarters at U.S. stores open at least a year. Wall Street analysts are expecting a second straight quarter of same-store sales growth, with the consensus a 1.8% increase, according to Thomson Reuters.

That would signal that the Bentonville, Ark., giant has overcome its failed experiment to remodel stores and reduce their merchandise assortments, aimed at courting higher-income shoppers, which backfired with the chain’s core customers. It would also mean that Wal-Mart’s competitors are feeling the heat as the company begins regaining its lost market share.

Chief Executive Mike Duke has acknowledged that Wal-Mart lost some of its low-price reputation during its slump, as competitors including dollar-store chains won over cash-strapped consumers with deals on small packs of staple goods such as toilet paper. Mr. Duke has vowed to counterattack.

Wal-Mart has been slashing costs, including cutting back its health-care plan, and says it will spend $2 billion over the next two years on a strategy of selling merchandise for even less. It doesn’t report monthly sales, but when other chains posted lackluster totals for January, several experts speculated that they were feeling the Wal-Mart effect.

Wal-Mart’s sales gains are coming at a cost; its profit fell 2.9% last quarter as its gross margins slipped. Still, if Wal-Mart succeeds in using aggressive pricing to regain some of the business it lost, that could have even costlier ramifications for the bottom lines of its competitors.

—Miguel Bustillo

The Week Ahead looks at coming corporate events.

Write to Joan E. Solsman at joan.solsman@dowjones.com and Miguel Bustillo at miguel.bustillo@wsj.com

By BETH GARDINER

Just like large companies eager to get a foothold in one of the world’s most important markets, international business schools are moving into China in a big way.

Eager to capitalize on demand in a fast-growing economy that has a huge need for well-trained managers, big name B-schools from Europe and the U.S. are launching and expanding M.B.A.-program collaborations with Chinese universities or going it alone with courses aimed at mid-career executives.

Experience in China is also a selling point at home, since Western students increasingly see the benefits of studying at an institution whose faculty have close-up experience of the country. Such links can also give M.B.A. students the chance to study in China for a module or a semester.

“The lure is to go and learn about what’s happening, and be in the middle of the action in one of the most dynamic economies in the world,” says Krishna Palepu, senior associate dean for international development at Harvard Business School. The school has had a faculty research base in China for about 20 years but now shares a new Shanghai classroom with other Harvard schools.

“In the last four or five years we have ramped it up to a much larger scale,” he says.

A flurry of deans from top international institutions who have moved recently to run programs in Asia shows the influence the continent’s institutions now wield in the B-school world, says Matt Symonds, whose company, Symonds GSB, does consulting for business schools.

George Yip is leaving the top post at the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands for the China Europe International Business School, or CEIBS, where John Quelch, a onetime head of London Business School, recently became dean. Arnoud De Meyer quit his job as director of the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School last year to become president of the Singapore Management University.

China has scores of its own business schools, which now attract thousands of students a year.

“But nonetheless, such is the thirst for a managerial talent pool that there remains tremendous demand for the Western business-school product,” Mr. Symonds says.

Duke University is setting up a campus in Kunshan, near Shanghai, and its Fuqua School of Business is slated to be the first to offer programs there. Some other Western universities run full-fledged M.B.A. programs in partnership with Chinese institutions, and many more offer shorter training courses.

Chinese companies are growing so quickly that training programs can barely keep up with the demand for qualified managers. With companies vying for their services, such employees jump ship frequently, so firms must make sure they have a pipeline of new talent available to manage their own growth, says Mr. Palepu.

Big multinational firms also look to the major business schools to train managers for their Chinese operations. And given the projections for China’s economic growth, the need is only likely to get bigger.

“The demand is already huge, but it’s going to grow several-fold,” says Rama Velamuri, academic director of the international executive M.B.A. program at the China Europe International Business School. CEIBS was one of the first international business schools in China when it opened in 1994 as a joint effort of the European Union and the Chinese government.

But Chinese students are no longer willing, as they were then, to listen unquestioningly to anyone bringing Western ideas to the classroom, he says.

“The market has become very discerning now,” Mr. Velamuri says. “It’s no longer good enough for you to come up with a theory that was done up in the West and present it to an audience in China. The Chinese will push back and say ‘Tell us how it will apply here.’”

The most promising new source of students may be from Chinese companies that are looking to expand globally and seeking to educate employees about Western markets.

Chinese companies “are now looking outward to the rest of the world,” Mr. Symonds says. “A lot of their executive-training demands will focus on the Western business schools teaching them how to reach out.”

Harvard Business School is among those seeking to tap that market with a new, simultaneously translated program for Chinese CEOs who do not speak English and whose companies are aiming to go international.

It is not just Chinese students who want a global perspective. Building a presence in China is key to a school’s attractiveness at home too, says Bernard Ramanantsoa, dean of HEC Paris business school, which offers joint M.B.A. degrees in China with Tsinghua University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and executive M.B.A.s in partnership with Chinese government agencies.

“It becomes a strong marketing tool if a school has this China engagement,” Mr. Velamuri of CEIBS says.

In many ways, though, China is still not an easy place for foreigners to do business. Bureaucratic and cultural hurdles can be high, Mr. Symonds says. And while many Western schools boast of their links with Chinese universities, “they happen at such different levels,” Mr. Symonds notes. “There are lots of flimsy partnerships.”

Markets like Singapore are becoming overcrowded with international B-schools, but Mr. Symonds predicts China may get only a few more.

“If it was as easy to do business in China as it is in Singapore, perhaps we’d see other main players setting up there,” he says.

By DENNIS NISHI

If you’ve been laid off and your former employer is hiring again, you might see the news as a chance to get back to work at your old firm. But first it’s important to consider whether it’s a good idea—and whether the skills you bring are what the company needs now.

The odds of getting an old job back are good if you were let go simply for budgetary reasons and the company outlook has been improving.

But before you get too excited about trying to return, do a self-assessment—and be honest. “Sometimes there is some selectivity in who is laid off,” says Jerald Jellison, a professor of social psychology at the University of Southern California who specializes in the workplace. He recommends asking yourself whether you created any bad feelings when you left or while you were working at the company. Was your work up to par? Was your role valued in better economic times?

You also should consider whether or not you feel a renewed commitment to the work you’d be doing, says Mr. Jellison. “I liken it to returning to an old flame. Is it really a good idea? Do you really want to be there?”

What the Company Needs

Next, consider what the company will need as conditions improve. If you were a marketing manager, figure out how you could return with a new angle of attack that could help make the company more competitive. If you’ve enrolled in any courses or have time to sign up for a webinar that will bump up your skills, highlight these efforts in a cover letter.

Keep in mind that even if your old firm is starting to rebuild and your position—something like it—is resurrected, you might not get the job. Approach the application process and interview as if you were a new candidate. Fine-tune your résumé, do research that shows you haven’t fallen behind on what the company has been doing, prepare for the interview and be ready to answer tough questions.

And before you apply, contact former co-workers who have kept their jobs to assess how things are now relative to when you were there. Get up to speed on any other news that can help you understand key personnel changes or staffing needs, says Ruth K. Liebermann, managing director of HR Insourcing in Boston. “Contact your former boss and let him [or her] know that you’re interested,” says Ms. Liebermann. “Tell your boss what new initiatives you plan to bring, with the benefit of hindsight, and what new energy you have coming back.”

No Grudges

When you contact your former boss or human-resources department, assure them that you harbor no bad feelings about being laid off and are eager to return to work. If you’re trying to persuade a new boss to bring you back, focus on your accomplishments and get references to back up your claims.

If there are no full-time positions available, consider asking to work on a contract basis. The pay is often higher and, though there are no benefits, the job may eventually transition into a full-time position.

Don’t be discouraged if you get through the interview process and find out the job now pays less than you earned before. “You have to consider the market conditions,” says Paul Glen, a management consultant in Los Angeles. “Everybody is taking pay cuts and losing benefits. That will change as the economy improves.”

Write to Dennis Nishi at cjeditor@dowjones.com