Inside Hershey’s New Jobs Website

Building the Ultimate Human Resources Website

Hershey Entertainment & Resorts’ (HE&R) human resources team has a big job: they’re charged with communicating job openings, marketing the benefits of working at the company’s 16 properties, and managing the application process for thousands of job seekers annually – while supporting more than 10,000 full-time, part-time, and seasonal employees.

To attract applicants in an increasingly-competitive job market, HE&R’s human resources department maintains a dedicated human resources website to manage their hiring needs. After receiving user feedback and seeing opportunities for improvement, the HR team tapped Synapse for solutions that would improve the website’s user experience (especially on mobile devices), and show off the benefits of working for HE&R – while seamlessly integrating the site with their third-party Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

Here’s what the website looked like before Synapse:

And, here’s what the website  looks like after the Synapse redesign:

New Navigation & Content Strategy

The site’s new content strategy focused on helping the user understand the benefits of working for HE&R, and to help them find the right job for them. To accomplish this, we created a completely new content structure – expanding some content, creating new content, and consolidating old content into fresh pages. Our idea was to create a five-prong funnel to get the user into the application process, depending on what was most important to them:

• Tailored search using the Find Your Sweet Opportunity search app.
• Featured jobs advertisements.
• Search by HE&R property.
• Search by career interest.
• Search by special requirements, such as jobs suitable for teens.

Intelligent Job Search

With hundreds of job openings available at all times, a big complaint about the original site was that users were having trouble finding the set of jobs that met their individual requirements. Rather than requiring the user to sift and sort their way through all the jobs, we took a fresh approach and created the Sweet Opportunity Finder.

This filtered form, which uses strategy similar to eCommerce product selection, allows the user to select from various preferences so they can see a list of job opportunities that meet their exact requirements. This custom application is integrated with Findly, a third-party Applicant Tracking System, to ensure real-time, up-to-the-minute accuracy and seamless integration of the application process.

User-Friendly Page Features

Creating a user-friendly, intuitive experience for users on all devices was one of the key requirements for the project. Relying on our knowledge of UX best practices, we packed each content page with user-friendly features.  Here are a few tricks we used that you can incorporate into your own web pages:

• Lead the user toward your conversion funnel by using prominent CTAs positioned high on the page.
• When more than one call-to-action is displayed on a page, use buttons for the most important actions, and text links for secondary actions.
• Offer automatic filtered search options to make information easy to find, like SEARCH JOBS FOR THIS CAREER PATH.
• Provide links for related content, in this case: RELATED JOBS.  Never take the user to a “dead end.”
• Make it easy to share content on social media with one-click sharing buttons.
• Incorporate text, visuals and videos to engage the widest variety of users.
• Use charts to help users compare data when presenting multiple options.
• Showcase related events or learning content which may be of interest to the user.
• Keep copy concise. Use bullets and section headings to guide users who “skim” through copy.
• Use sticky navigation bars and breadcrumbs to assist the user with navigation tasks.

Internal Content Page