Executives say they need to find a new generation to run its 4,700 U.S. stores. They're turning to college grads.

The store manager is crucial for Walmart. The job requires long hours and—in big stores—overseeing an operation with roughly $100 million in annual sales and a team of 300.

Many existing store managers have been in their roles for at least a decade. The tight labor market and competition for workers create another challenge—even for a job that often pays more than $200,000 a year.

—Brandy Jordan, a longtime Walmart human-resources executive.

Those worries led Walmart to create a program to train college graduates to become store managers. It promises a starting wage of at least $65,000 a year and an accelerated two-year track into the top store job.

The program, known as College2Career, launched with two recent graduates this spring and aims to bring nearly 1,000 applicants through this summer. Ty Juarez is one of them.

Ms. Juarez grew up in Southern California and recently graduated with a business degree while working at a Target store. Her mother is a regional manager for Walmart. “It puts me in a perfect position to start a career,” Ms. Juarez said. She sees store manager as a path to even bigger roles.

Over 12 weeks, the two trainees learned about stocking shelves, scheduling and on-the-job technology tools, through virtual courses and store walk-throughs with executives.

Like a lot of companies, Walmart is struggling to fill its jobs. The competition for graduates is fierce: Wall Street banks have raised starting salaries for first-year analysts to $100,000 or more. Salaries for junior lawyers are above $200,000 at many top law firms for the first time.

Walmart executives believe that a significant percentage of the U.S. population has worked for the retailer at some point in their lives.

But, if the company can keep a worker for at least two years, they stay, said Donna Morris, Walmart’s head of human resources.

“By the end of 2020 we were getting really clear on, our workforce is truly the best asset,” she said. Walmart declined to share turnover data.

At first, “I was just like, ‘Oh, yeah, this will help me pay for college,’ ” said Aleia Marino, who started working as a self-checkout host at a Walmart in Ohio at 17 and has been selected for the program’s next class of trainees.