Director Category Management Salty Snacks

Job Location: Hershey, PA

NOTE: Will consider remote with preferred location of Hershey or near key customer locations in AR, MN, OH.

Required travel 40-50% (collaboration at Hershey headquarters & customer sites)
 

Position Summary:

The Director, Category Management Salty Snacks, responsibility is to establish Hershey’s vision of becoming a leading voice in Salty Snacking, and a strategic thought leader for our retailers, with the shopper at the center of everything we do.  This role will be responsible to establish the strategic blueprint to unlock Portfolio opportunities to deliver value creation for our customers, consumers, and company, with strong connectivity with other leading commercial functions, such as Marketing, Omni, SRGM and Customer Strategy. The Director will deliver solutions in the categories that Hershey participates in, as well as adjacent categories in shared space or seasons; this role will set the vision beyond the current landscape in identifying category driving opportunities. This position requires outstanding thought leadership, commercial acumen, people leadership and strong command of Category Management principles and tools. 

This role leads the entire Category Management function for our Salty business, with connectivity to our CMG Category Management partners.  Develop and direct the execution of analytical and strategic work which result in top-line sales and growth; partner with commercial functions to maximize our customer strategy, unlock new category expansion opportunities and collaborate to develop price pack architecture solutions. This position requires outstanding leadership skillset, recruit, train, develop, and coach for performance in order to develop and maintain a high-performance team. 
 

Responsibilities:
- Achieves sales and share targets by leading and developing a highly effective team.
- Solidifies the vision and blueprint for Salty Snacks category management.
- Establish deeply rooted category partnerships with key retailers to enable long-term advisership/captainship positions
- Partner with key retailers and customer teams to establish Hershey’s as a strategic partner. Partners with key internal stakeholders (i.e. CMG Cat Man, Consumer Insights, Syndicated Data Management, Business Intelligence, SRGM) to deliver excellence in tools and insights that can enable our vision and objectives.
- Play a key role in the Hershey Salty Snacks annual and strategic planning process, bringing forward customer-focused insights to drive Price Pack Architecture, Brand, and Innovation strategies. Contribute to annual planning objectives, with clear customer and channel specific space acquisition targets, insights, and resource needs to achieve objectives.
- Understand our company’s long-term, commercial, and channel strategies, creating tools, learning plans, and category-based insights. 
- Build new processes to ensure organizational awareness and alignment to category objectives and performance.
- Ensure ongoing investment in tools, training, and data resources is continually reviewed, optimized, and managed within budget.
- Lead the construction of the 3 year shopper research learning plan to ensure shelving and assortment recommendations are insights based. 
- Effectively manage business by understanding and coaching: Syndicated and panel analysis (ie. Numerator, Circana, Nielsen, Euromonitor, etc), proprietary research, the Business Development planning process, and development of quantitatively supported best demonstrated sales practices.
- Utilize the performance management process to coach and develop team members throughout the year, through the effective use of the performance appraisal process and performance records.  Handle administrative duties: Weekly T&E expense reports, Performance management, yearly input to budgeting process.
- Utilize the Internal Selection and Succession process to fill openings in a timely manner. Prepare and maintain bench strength to contribute to the Hershey Company talent pool.
- Leverage business intelligence tools like Planet Retail and Kantar.
- Deep understanding of marketplace trends in and outside of the channel.
- Develop non-compete vendor community relationships.
- Continuous monitoring and reporting of macro trends across people, generations, channels, food, eating, snacks, economy, etc partnering with trend experts within and outside of the organization.
- Create physical and digital strategies to ensure consistency in category execution across all fulfillment models. Integrate omnichannel path to purchase to drive holistic shopper solutions.
 

Qualifications:

 
Education: Bachelor's Degree Required; MBA preferred
 

Experience:  10+ years progressive professional experience with 3+ years Consumer product commercial experience. Salty Snacks experience preferred. Strategic & strong analytical experience.

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