The Hershey Company

EMPLOYEES

13,000

PRIMARY BUSINESS

The Hershey Company is the largest producer of quality chocolate in North America and is a global leader in chocolate and sugar confectionary. Headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania, the company’s iconic brands include Hershey’s, Reese’s, Hershey’s Kisses, KitKat, Twizzlers, Ice Breakers and Hershey’s Bliss chocolates. With revenues of more than $5 billion, The Hershey Company is also a leader in the fast-growing dark and premium chocolate segment, marketing such brands as Hershey’s Special Dark and Hershey’s Extra Dark chocolates.

VISION STATEMENT

Great People Building Great Brands.

PERSONNEL PHILOSOPHY

One of the things that make working at the Hershey Company special is the deep connection employees have to the company and its brands. This sense of connection, shared commitment and dedication is unique and forms the foundation of the company’s success.

The Hershey Company is solidly committed to making a positive difference in the community and actively works to enrich the lives of it’s employees and retirees through competitive wages and benefits including a wide variety of wellness programs, incentive programs, a progressive 401(k), a tiered medical plan, benefits for domestic partners, matching gift programs and more.

As part of the legacy of Hershey Company Founder Milton S. Hershey, employees share a deep commitment to helping those in need. The company’s corporate philanthropic efforts are focused on children at risk, providing support for The United Way, the Children’s Miracle Network and numerous other organizations that work to enrich lives in the local and global communities.

Hershey’s values, “One Hershey,” tell a powerful story: A global and diverse team, operating with integrity, working together, determined to make a difference.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

Hershey is committed to being all-inclusive and to realizing its vision, “Great People Building Great Brands.” The company’s strength comes from bringing together people from diverse backgrounds, ideas and interests. Hershey provides opportunities for all employees to learn, grow, and shine both in both the work environment and in the community.

Diversity Councils and Affinity Groups provide a forum through which employees provide and discuss recommendations on increasing productivity as well as the quality of the work environment. Such Affinity Groups and Councils include the Asian Affinity Group, the African American Affinity Group, the Hispanic Affinity Group, the Network of Young Professionals, PRISM- A GLBT Resource and Alliance, The Women’s Council, and the Sales Diversity Council.

The Hershey Company understands the importance of strengthening business for the overall economic growth of the communities it serves. With a strong supplier diversity program, the company is committed to partnering locally and nationally with diverse suppliers to provide goods and services in support of its global operations.

Read more about diversity at Hershey’s.

Read more about supplier diversity at Hershey’s.

CPGPeople on LinkedIn^® Surpasses 10,000 Members!

We are pleased to announce that earlier this month our LinkedIn Group, CPGPeople exceeded 10,000 members. This latest growth spurt makes CPGPeople one of the fastest growing groups (and second largest CPG Group) on the #1 professional networking site on the planet!

Started by Executive Vice President Penny Sallberg-Carrillo just 18 months ago, CPGPeople provides a space for professionals in the Consumer Packaged Goods industry to connect, share ideas and discuss issues pertinent to work in the industry.
Every member of CPGPeople is personally screened and cleared by Ms. Sallberg-Carrillo who specifically restricts membership to CPG-experienced professionals only; recruiters are not allowed membership.

According to Sallberg-Carrillo, “CPGPeople is a group in which professionals can speak freely about their professional experiences, share ideas for problem solving, search for advice, or simply socialize without concerning themselves about the watchful eyes of corporate recruiters.

“Of course, we do actively engage our CPGPeople members in job searches and frequently ask for members’ assistance in filling a variety of positions. Membership in CPGPeople is a great way to network for job opportunities as well as a place to expand your own personal connections.”

To become a member of CPGPeople, just go to the group page on LinkedIn and apply now!

Congratulations New Hires!

Kevin Howard – Conoco Philips
Rick Torgalski – Hostess Brands
Cartie Beckett – Peet’s Coffee

FREE Tele-Seminars:

February 16, 2010
Transforming Job Descriptions into Powerful Messages

Do your job descriptions inspire hiring managers to call you? Do they paint the portrait of you as an ideal job candidate and present a clear and concise message of your value? Join Kathy Keshemberg and Kevin Morris as they discuss what makes a job description stand out in today’s job market, present examples of interview-winning job descriptions, and answer your questions regarding this critical part of your resume.

March 2, 2010
Gain Job Search Momentum with Social Media

We’ve all heard the buzz about social media, but where do you start? How do you figure out the best strategies to incorporate in your job search? Join us on this call to get a practical overview and learn how to directly apply these tools to your job search. We’ll be covering 8 tips for USING LinkedIn (not just being ON LinkedIn!), 7 ways to use Facebook professionally, 4 reasons to reconsider Twitter, and 5 mistakes to avoid.

Kathy Keshemberg will be interviewing Jennifer Scott who is a talent acquisition strategist and recruiter with over 16 years of recruiting experience and a passion for networking and new media marketing. Jennifer offers tactical approaches to the job search. With the ability to reverse-engineer the recruiting process for those in transition, she inspires people to take action in their career campaign. This one is not-to-be-missed!

To register for either of these tele-seminars, drop Kathy an email at cpg@acareeradvantage.com; complete details will be forwarded to you.

Can’t make the call? No problem! A link to the recording will be sent to all who pre-register. To get your name on the list, email Kathy at cpg@acareeradvantage.com.

The Value of Saying Thank You

You’re walking to your car after a long, stressful round of interviews for your dream job. So how did it go? Are you confident you nailed it? Or are you replaying the conversation in your head wishing you had said things differently or remembering things you could have mentioned?

What’s next? Do you “hope” you did well and wait for the phone to ring? Or would you like the opportunity to reiterate a key strength or talk about a relevant skill you forgot to mention during the interview?

Well, now is the perfect time to employ one of the lessons learned from our mothers – “always say thank you.” A thank-you letter is the perfect opportunity to mind your manners, plus express your continued interest in the position, create a positive impression, reiterate your unique value, and mention anything you may have forgotten.

This is not the time to use a generic “template” – this letter needs to specifically address what was discussed during the interview and how you are a fit for this position. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when writing your thank-you letter:

• Re-state your key selling points – summarize your accomplishments, experience, or strengths as they relate to the position. Your goal is to refresh the interviewer’s memory and give yourself a competitive advantage over other candidates they have spoken with. This written rationale for hiring you could very well be shared with others involved in making the hiring decision, so state your case!
  
  
• Personalize your comments – re-frame your answers to key questions asked or refer back to something specific that qualifies you for the position. This will not only demonstrate that you were attentive during the conversation, but it also helps the interviewer re-connect with you.
  
  
• Express your enthusiasm – this is your chance (without sounding desperate) to convey your interest in the company and the position.
  
  
• Thank each interviewer - yes, you must send a thank-you letter to every person you met during the interview process. And, while it is extra effort, write a personalized letter to each. Imagine if the interviewers reconvene only to find that you sent the same thank you letter to each of them. This is your golden opportunity to make a personal connection.
  
  
• Politely ask for the job or the next interview.
  
  
• Send your letters immediately – if not the same day, for sure by the next day. Email is “okay” – you will really make an impact, however, if you mail your letters.
  
  
• Proofread carefully – just like your resume and cover letter, which give the first impression, the thank-you letter may well be your last. Don’t blow this opportunity with a minor mistake.
  
  

Although a thank-you letter is simple to write and offers tremendous benefits, surprisingly many job seekers don’t utilize this effective method for gaining an edge over the competition. Many times, if two candidates are equal, the one who takes the time to write a compelling thank-you letter will win the job offer. Be sure that you take advantage of this strategy!

For more than two decades, Kathy Keshemberg, NCRW, CCMC and her team at A Career Advantage have been providing professionals with world-class resume consultation and writing, career coaching and personal branding services.
Learn more…

The Human Nature of Recruiters

Have you ever stopped to consider the job of a corporate recruiter? It's hard. Really hard.

Budgets are being cut over and over, and contrary to common sense, one of the places they cut first is in the HR budget. So these huge corporations are cutting people and money in their hiring departments, fewer and fewer people are doing the work of more and more. You can imagine someone whose job it is to look through hundreds, perhaps thousands of resumes, to find enough people qualified to receive a first call.

Recruiters get resumes that are poorly formatted, have grammatical errors, aren't laid out chronologically or are chronologically backwards. A lot of things have changed in resume style over the years, but “last job first” has never changed and probably never will.

Corporate recruiters get resumes with bad spelling, bad explanations, bad dates, and bad assessments. They get resumes with cutesy fonts or hard to read fonts.They get resumes that are trying so hard to be different that they are ridiculous.These overworked corporate recruiters sometimes give explicit instructions in their advertisements and candidates simply ignore them. After getting so many of these is it any wonder if corporate recruiters think that a lot of the job-seeking world are dummies.

OK, maybe I'm getting crotchety in my old age and maybe I've seen too many bad resumes, but you as the job seeker have to realize that this is a climate in which you are looking for a job. There are lots of you out there doing the same and the corporate recruiting ranks are thinning. If you don't have a decent mistake-free resume, can you really blame them for tossing you in the round file at first glance?

If you don't fill out every one of the questions required for the position and leave fields blank, your chances of being considered are necessarily lessened. Corporate recruiters have very little time and the easier you make it for them, the better it is for you.

I hear complaints all the time from candidates about how recruiters are inconsiderate and don't call them back; that they never hear from anyone, and they don't know what's going on. Well I understand that this is a problem, and I don't like it either. But consider this— you are only one candidate, you only want one job and your sensitivity is extremely high about who is courteous and who is not.Your only job is getting a job.

Corporate recruiters are people just like you. They are trying to do their jobs and like sharks, their only goal is finding that one fish that looks good enough to eat. Just imagine biting into one fish after another, and all are wrong. Then late at night, after futilely biting all day you catch yet another fish that looks just awful. With so many resumes coming across recruiters’ desks every day, it would be close to impossible to contact all the people with bad resumes and tell them why they won’t be contacted.

My reason for giving you this straight talk is not to make you feel bad or to berate you, it is to make you treat recruiters’ eyes as something you must please.They are not obligated to you. No one deserves a job simply because they want or need one.These are hard times, but we are all in this together. I want our candidates to understand the process and not waste their time fighting a system that is broken. Don't blame the messengers, (or rather the "not messengers"). They aren't telling you anything because they don’t have good news.If there were good news, believe me, they would pick up the phone and you would go to the second step in the recruitment process.

Don't waste your precious time and energy on needing them to contact you. Just make your resume perfect, fill out everything, answer all questions, and leave nothing blank. Make it easy for them. It may not work every time, but I guarantee you it will work somewhere if you have all the other pieces they need.

I also guarantee that if you don't make it easy for them, your chances of being considered go down in accordance with how tired they are. And they're all tired.

One more thing while I'm on the subject. Bear in mind that this just might be me, but most recruiters don't really care that you love your wife/husband and children, that you read books or meditate, take long walks on the beach, go to church, or churn butter for a hobby.

If you have such a section in your resume, keep it brief or it can just go away unless you do something REALLY interesting in your spare time. You could use this space to add another bullet point on your accomplishments. I don't believe that anyone ever got a job because his or her hobby happens to mesh with the recruiter or hiring manager’s hobby. But that's just me.