The Hershey Company reviews

Everything to do with daily job responsibilities. Way too much merchandising, very little selling. Feel like a Walmart ringer cleaning up after associates who don't do their job. 99% of ordering done at corporate level, RSR responsible for getting the product to the floor, not for selling. Each Walmart is visited 1-2 times per week, for approximately two hours. Realistically, lucky to get 10 minutes with a store manager per visit. The rest of your time is spent merchandising product, building displays. As an RSR, you are constantly fighting the same battles with the same managers. Very common to get a display out one week, come back the next to find it broken down in a poor location. Most hires are asked to relocate and paid a relocation bonus. Not a con unless you have to pay it back... Which most RSRs end up doing. The RSR position only has a 13% two year retention rate (if you're one of the 87% that leaves within two years, you have to pay back the relocation fee). While this is completely fair, I bring it up more to point to the dissatisfaction of most people who take this position. The penalties for leaving (pay back roughly $3000 in relocation, give up company car, give up decent pay, benefits, etc.) are not enough to keep most people from doing so because the job is not satisfying. Advice to anybody considering this position would be to stay away.

The Hershey Company is in a declining category and sales have been plateauing in the past few years. As consumer trends have shifted towards better for you products, Hershey has acquired companies such as Krave Jerky and Barkthins to help capture some of the dollar opportunities in the snacking and better for you category. This has resulted in an insurmountable number of priorities placed on the retail team. When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Not only do you have to attend to the demands of their everyday business but you also have to balance their seasonal business like Halloween where you are building pallet after pallet. When corporate is unable to sell in a program, you are instructed to sell to managers at store level. You are required to work a minimum of 47 hours even though when you are hired, you are told that 40 is the minimum is and anything above is optional. You are sent passive aggressive emails every month if you do not hit a certain number of hours in store or your priority call coverage. You are not provided the tools to be able to achieve above a 90% on both metrics. Some territories have such a large number of stores that they are set up for failure in the beginning. You are also not informed that you receive tons of display boxes that are automatically sent to your home at the time of hire. If you live in a 1 bedroom apartment, it will quickly fill up your entire living room. They do not pay for storage. The company talks about reducing waste but does not realize how much money they spend on unnecessary display kits. Most of the time, you are not informed about what's being sent to you and what it is used for. The manager that I had was inexperienced, unsupportive, and self-centered. She did not care about us as individuals and we were treated like numbers. She hardly provided recognition and was quick to point out any criticisms rather than provide constructive feedback. During her tenure, more than half the team quit and left the company because of her. There is also a lack of access to networking opportunities with higher managers. My manager discouraged us from reaching out to them. Promotions are politically based even when you are one of the top performers. When everyone is told they will be promoted upon hiring, it creates a crab in a bucket mentality. They use promotion as a tactic to extract more value out of you rather than actually care about your career path. The next step is usually a district sales supervisor role where you are managing reps that call on convenience stores. Other roles such as customer sales executive and category analyst are less abundant so you may be stuck in the retail sales representative role for a long time before a role besides district sales supervisor opens up. Hershey is a company with a great legacy but for anyone that is applying, I would say just be aware of what you are signing up for.