Hiring 5,000 Quebecers, 27,000 across Canada
By Robert Frank
www.thesuburban.com
American retail giant Target started recruiting local staff today for its new stores in Ste. Dorothée and Chomedey.
Spokesman Sébastien Bouchard told The Suburban that the company will hold a job fair this week from May 8-10 at the Laval Hilton hotel to hire full time supervisors for the two stores. Target will convene another recruitment drive there for prospective non-supervisory staff, June 11 to 20 for its stores in the Mega Centre Laval and Centre Laval.
“Each store will be hiring about 15 team leaders and anywhere between 150-200 team members,” Bouchard said in an interview. “In addition to customer contact positions, we also will be hiring people to work in logistics and asset protection, and there are even some night shift jobs available in merchandising.”
Target’s expansion is the largest in Canadian commercial history; he added “and will energize the retail landscape here in Quebec.”
“Never before has a company opened 124 stores all at once, including 25 that will open in Quebec by the end of this year,” Bouchard noted. “We will be hiring more than 5,000 people in Quebec and, across Canada, almost 27,000.”
The companies has already hired directors for each store, who are currently undergoing two month of intensive training in the United States and Canada.
“It’s fairly significant, he said. “Target invests heavily in training because our culture is different from what you would find in a typical store.”
“The whole guest experience is driven by our culture, a philosophy that every guest experience ought to be fast, fun and friendly.”
“Canada is Target’s first international expansion,” Bouchard underscored. “It reflects a vote of confidence in the Canadian retail market by the company’s headquarters in Minnesota. It involves a significant investment in terms of construction, because every single store is undergoing an $11-23 million makeover and all of our premises are going to be certified according to LEED standards for environment-friendliness.”
“Investing so heavily in the Quebec economy is obviously very good news for Quebecers,” he emphasized, adding that Target, which operates 1,784 stores in the United States, “has long been known in America as a very good neighbour, investing heavily in the communities it serves.”
Bouchard said that he expects that the team leaders Target hires will commence work in June, with the remaining employees starting in July or thereabouts.
Specific store opening dates depend upon the pace of construction, he continued, though he expects the launch to take place in early Fall.
Bouchard urged aspiring employees to complete their application online before attending the job fair.
“It will speed up the process considerably,” he concluded.
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