GUEST BLOG: The Hershey Company augments candidate engagement

Colleen Seibert, pictured below, is currently the Human Resource Analyst of University Recruitment, at The Hershey Company. She’s been with the company for five years, and is responsible for supporting the implementation of the enterprise staffing strategy for university recruiting and establishing plans to focus on acquiring talent to meet the current and future needs of the company.

Here, in the first of an exciting new series of Blippar guest blog posts, she writes about using Blippar to turn Hershey stands at college job fairs into interactive experiences in order to excite prospective graduate applicants and inform them of the key pillars of Hershey's value proposition in an innovative way.

hershey blippar colleen seibert augmented reality

Ripe for innovation

The candidate experience at job fairs hasn’t changed much in the last 20 years. Booths have got bigger and are set up with a more creative use of space, but the concept is still the same: attendees line up, talk to a company representative for two or three minutes, then walk off with a paper brochure. If they’re lucky, they get a chance to be interviewed in a makeshift, curtain-walled office flanked by three other candidates doing exactly the same thing.

In this environment, candidates often don’t have an opportunity to engage with the company culture, understand the direction of the business, or clearly see the reasons why they should join.

Looking beyond the brands

Candidates are typically excited by Hershey’s brands and products, but there is often little knowledge of our company or the people behind our big iconic brands such as Hershey’s Kisses, Reese’s, Twizzlers and Jolly Ranchers.

Since top-tier students attending graduate job fairs will also be talking to companies with big, well-known brands, Hershey's stand needed to really leap out and engage attendees. We designed a solution that would engage students in a way that would excite the age demographic while informing them of the key pillars of Hershey’s value proposition in an innovative way. But it had to be more than just 'cool'.

A creative solution

With a key university job fair approaching, a crack team of three Hershey employees decided to improve candidate engagement by leveraging an emerging technology: augmented reality. By partnering with Blippar, the team set out to create a series of interactive, one-on-one experiences that would engage college students with the amazing story of the Hershey’s founder, the company's culture, our CSR activities and our remarkable people.

Mission accomplished

By placing several blippable marker images on the Hershey's booth design, students were able to use Blippar's free visual browsing app to activate educational and interactive media uniquely tied to each image. Each image, when blipped on a mobile phone or tablet, triggered an interactive experience relating to one of the four key pillars of Hershey’s Employee Value Proposition: Growth, Brands, Helping Children in Need and Remarkable People.

Lastly, candidates could use the app to sign up for a video interview with The Hershey Company, effectively adding themselves to the company’s talent pipeline.

The immersive experiences captured the complete attention of candidates over several minutes, focusing them solely on Hershey’s employee value proposition. Afterwards, Hershey recruiters were able to further engage with students by answering their questions and assessing their skills.

Interactive blippable brochures containing the marker images were also handed out, so students could continue blipping at home, experiencing and sharing The Hershey Company story even after the event was over. Both the booth and the handouts created a great deal of buzz at the event, positioning Hershey as an innovative employer among peers.

Blipp me

Blipp the poster markers below to launch The Hershey Company's interactive experiences. Just download the free Blippar app onto your smartphone or tablet, open it, fill the mobile screen with each image (one at a time, displayed on another device or computer) to blipp and learn more about Hershey's employee value proposition.