Hiring Hundreds of Locals: Q&A with Target Manager Valerie Custodio

, and with just over two months left until the local bullseye is unveiled, it's time to start staffing the store.

Until May 19, Target is holding a job fair at the Capitola Career Center. For full details on how to apply, .

Valerie Custodio has been named the store manager of the new Target. She has been a Target employee for 10 years in both Marina and Sand City. Custodio spoke with Capitola-Soquel Patch at the job fair Thursday morning. See highlights of that conversation below.

Capitola-Soquel Patch: How's the turn out so far?

Valerie Custodio, Manager of Capitola Target: It's great. There was a line when we opened but we actually had scheduled over 600 interviews every 15 minutes for the next three days. In previous hiring events they've gotten 300 to 500 walk-in applicants per day too. 

Patch: So you could have over 2,000 interviews.

Custodio: Hopefully. Our hiring goal is 300. If it ends up being 310 or 320, that's fine too. But we want it to be at least 300. We're building that store from the ground up. We're hiring everybody locally. Want to get as much done as we can this weekend but we will continue hiring going forward. 

Patch: What are you looking for in an employee?

Custodio: We're looking for people that are fast, fun and friendly. Our guests that shop our store expect us to be friendly. They are guests. We don't call them customers. We call them guests. So we need people that are fun and are willing to work hard.

Patch: Have you seen the progress they're making over at the store?

Custodio: Yeah and it looks good. We get to go in there as often as we like as long as we wear a hard hat. It's pretty amazing going from being the old Gottchalks building to being a Target store. They've pretty much gutted it and started all over again. It's very exciting.

Patch: How does Target fit into Capitola?

Custodio: Really well. Target is a really community-based organization. We give back $3 million to the communities that we serve. We have volunteer events in town that help support the community. Anything from early childhood reading to arts to food bank and clean-up events. Capitola has been so welcoming with us. We also adopt a school, so we've been working with . They are going to be our adopted school. We're talking about some great things we can do for them. 

Patch: What kind of stuff can Target do to help Soquel Elementary School?

Custodio: One thing is internal painting. It could be their cafeteria or library or something inside. We've talked about a beautification process on the outside with the yard, playground and the back of the School. We've also talked about doing reading events. We go to the schools and read to the kids.

Are you excited for Target to come to town? Did you know about Target's outreach program? What do you think? Tell us in the comments!

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