Same at my store too, Target is pedigree based not merit based, due to on campus recruiting. On the flip side all of my female etls and tls all have humanities degrees, and not something difficult like finance, accounting, and engineering. They don't even have real degrees haha, they have sociology or psychology type degrees.
Please explain how sociology isn't a "real" degree. Also, psychology isn't a valid subject either?
Sure, those subjects often start from a position of bias and isn't a "hard" science like chemistry or genetics, etc.
It doesn't negate the fact that those two respective fields can be useful in terms of understanding how to interact with others, observe behaviors, etc
Management isn't just about crunching numbers -- it's also about inspiring the uninspired. Not to mention extracting the maximum amount of productivity from people using social engineering.
Let's not distract from the actual issue here....
Yes, there is some debate about how legit it is to require a degree and zero experience. (especially if said degree is from an online school that may be a diploma mill, or if the ETL barely made it through college and had an extremely poor GPA)
However, the actual issue is that I think it is pretty damn clear that over the past few years there has been massive sexism/racism/age discrimination going on with ETL recruiting.
When I was a Playstation Rep, I literally had 17 Target stores in my territory. I had to speak to ETLs constantly at those stores. Literally 99% of the ETLs I dealt with were young, female, white, and *very* attractive physically. (also, most of them came across as dumb as a brick and the kind of idiot that will blindly do as they are told....)
You cannot tell me that is just a coincidence. Over the past few years, there have been constant news stories saying that tons of college grads are being forced to take minimum wage jobs at Burger King and similar places. Given that fact, I do not believe for a moment that only young, white, and female college grads are applying for a job that is designed for new college grads and pays $50,000 to start.
Now, this is in contrast to the Wal-Mart, Best Buys, and Gamestops I had in my territory. They *all* had a very diverse mix of managers that I dealt with. Not only were they much more diverse, I would say that only about 15% of them would qualify as "highly physically attractive".... as opposed to what I would have to say 99% of Target ETLs meeting that description. Also, most of the other companies managers were much older.
There is something wrong going on with Target ETL recruitment.... anyone who doesn't see it is completely naive.