Background Check: King’s Hawaiian vs. Dave’s Killer Bread
In this particularly starchy edition of Background Check, we’ll look at the careers pages Dave’s Killer Bread and King’s Hawaiian, the two most delicious brands we’ve ever pitted against each other.
King’s Hawaiian
King’s Hawaiian has an excellent careers page. It’s bright, visual, and packed with information about the company and its culture. The page is highly branded too—that orange is unmistakable to consumers.
Visitors are greeted by a full-bleed, above-the-fold image of the company’s offices, plus the message We’re Hiring!
Announcing that you’re hiring clearly and boldly at the top of your careers page is one of the most underrated recruiting moves. Even better: Put it on the homepage of your main site.
Just below that is a three-minute video about the history of the family-owned and operated company and six-minute video about the aloha culture embraced by King’s Hawaiian as an employer. The videos are professional and polished and reinforce the company values of excellence, dignity, and telling it like it is. They show clean and modern facilities and feature real employees talking about their experiences working at King’s.
The page also includes information about company benefits and three categories of employment—operations, corporate, and retail.
Overall, the page does exactly what it should do:
Establishes the employer brand tone (friendly, open, kind) while visually linking it to the consumer-facing brand
Introduces prospective applicants to potential colleagues
Provides basic information about company values and benefits
Shows visitors open positions
Balances text, images, and videos
My one qualm is that the careers page should be easier to find from the King’s homepage, especially since the company is hiring. The only link is in a drop-down under the main nav. To improve visibility, we recommend giving your careers page its own link in the main navigation and in the site footer. Don’t let those job seekers bounce.
Dave’s Killer Bread
I’m also a big fan of Dave’s Killer Bread. Not just for their product and their fair chance hiring practices, but also for the way they represent themselves as an employer. (For example, Dave's Instagram account successfully combines consumer and employer branding.)
First things first. DKB’s careers page is easily found from the homepage in their site footer.
On the careers page, visitors are greeted with a full-bleed, above-the-fold, looping (silent) video of DKB employees at work. It’s friendly, it’s dynamic, it’s eye-catching, and it contributes to establishing the employer brand tone: fun, hard-working, capable, positive.
And then—holy wall of text.
Look, the information here is great: vision, mission, values, benefits, links to open positions. But it’s just so difficult to read. The line spacing is tight, it’s not clear what’s hyper linked, and there’s little visual interruption among the text.
This could be remedied by:
Breaking up the text using images and/or video of real employees and the DKB facilities
Using icons, line, and color blocking—rather than text alone—to create sections and visual categories
Turning text links to open positions into easy-to-find buttons in a contrasting color
Dave’s is also missing the opportunity to more closely tie its fair chance hiring practices to its general employer brand. The company’s Second Chance Employment program is mentioned here only once, but does have its own dedicated page elsewhere on the site, which might make job seekers wonder: Do people with criminal records have to engage with the company through a separate channel?
And the winner is…
I’m giving this one to King’s Hawaiian. The user experience on the careers page is just superior.
It balances text, images, and video. It’s easily navigable, full of relevant information, and nails the connection with its consumer-facing brand.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some bread to eat.
Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza writes about workplace culture, DEI, and hiring. Her work has appeared in Fast Company, From Day One, and InHerSight, among others.
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