How Conagra Built a High-Converting Career Site at Scale — With a Team of One

How candidates experience your hiring process can reflect aspects of your organization. For HR and talent teams, the career site is no longer a static destination — it’s a working tool that shapes who applies, who returns, and who follows through.

That reality is especially challenging for large, decentralized organizations. Conagra Brands, a 100-year-old company with 42 food brands, faced exactly that challenge, shared Heather Leszczewicz, Recruitment Marketing Manager at Conagra during a recruitment marketing inspired session at IAMPHENOM. What makes their story stand out is not just the results, but how they achieved them: with a lean team, clear priorities, and a career site built to scale using Phenom Design Studio, a Content Management System (CMS) for talent marketers like no other.

Watch the entire session here, or continue reading for the highlights!

A Complex Hiring Environment

With more than 100 years of history, Conagra brings iconic brands like Hunt’s, Duncan Hines, Slim Jim, Swiss Miss, and Birds Eye to pantries across North America. Its footprint spans corporate roles and dozens of manufacturing plants with hiring needs varying widely by location, role type, and audience. While corporate recruiting is centralized, plant hiring operates locally, creating fragmented experiences for candidates.

That same brand diversity, however, created real challenges for recruiting. When Leszczewicz joined, Conagra faced several hurdles:

• A small, nimble recruiting marketing function

• Decentralized hiring across corporate teams and manufacturing plants

• Multiple legacy career sites and inconsistent candidate journeys

• Limited ability to personalize experiences for different audiences

And when she took ownership of employer brand and recruitment marketing for the company, she did so as a team of one. Her remit covered the career site, landing pages, content, visuals, and campaigns, all without agency support.

The goal wasn’t just to modernize the career site. Conagra needed a dynamic, scalable candidate experience that could attract and convert talent across hourly and salaried roles, corporate and plant hiring, and dozens of brands. It also had to clearly reflect the company’s refreshed employee value proposition (EVP) without adding operational burden.

Building the Right Foundation

Rather than trying to do everything at once, Conagra focused first on building a strong foundation using Phenom Career Site and Design Studio.

Leszczewicz described the following capabilities as the “pantry staples” of candidate experience — features every modern career site needs to get right:

• AI-powered job discovery to help candidates find relevant roles faster

• Location-based search and map views customized with Conagra brand logos

• Employee testimonials using flexible widgets (video and static)

• Authentic employee photos and brand-forward visuals

AI-driven tools on a Phenom Career Site streamline how talent uncovers opportunities. Location-based search and map views make it easy to understand where jobs are located, especially for hourly candidates. Employee testimonials and photography bring the experience to life without overwhelming the page.

What made the difference was control. Design Studio allowed Leszczewicz to make updates independently, test ideas, and iterate without lengthy development cycles. This self-service model proved critical for maintaining momentum with limited resources.

“This is my third career site implementation, and Phenom has been the easiest by far because it’s plug-and-play.” 

- Heather Leszczewicz, Recruitment Marketing Manager, Conagra Brands

How To Scale Local Hiring Without Losing Consistency

One of Conagra’s most effective moves was rethinking plant-level hiring pages. Hourly candidates often want immediate, practical context: what’s made at the facility, what the environment looks like, and what roles are open.

To address this, Leszczewicz created more than 40 localized plant landing pages using page templates. Each page follows the same structure — banner, plant overview, visuals, and job listings — while allowing room for location-specific content.

Recruiters and HR partners contribute photos and details, reducing the need for on-site visits while keeping pages authentic. The approach balances local relevance with brand consistency, a common tension for large HR teams.

Progress mattered more than perfection. That mindset kept pages current and prevented the site from becoming stale.

“Baby steps are still steps forward. I aim for 80 percent and keep building from there.”

- Heather Leszczewicz, Recruitment Marketing Manager, Conagra Brands

Using Personalization To Support Conversion

Beyond structure, Conagra leaned into personalization to guide candidates more effectively. Dynamic widgets adjust content based on browsing behavior, surfacing relevant roles and recommendations without requiring candidates to search extensively.

SEO also played a meaningful role. Updated landing pages, keyword-rich job content, and clean site architecture helped drive organic traffic. Offline efforts supported this strategy as well, with QR codes placed at plants directing candidates straight to the correct landing page.

The result was a career site that not only attracted visitors but that kept them engaged and moving forward.

Measured Career Site Outcomes: Increased Traffic, Application Conversion, and Job Seeker Engagement

The impact of these changes shows up clearly in the data:

• 65% year-over-year increase in career site traffic

• 82% conversion rate from job visit to completed application

• 45% increase in returning job seekers

• 23% increase in multi-page engagement

Those numbers are especially notable given the complexity of Conagra’s hiring needs. Applications still capture role-specific details such as shift preferences, yet candidates complete them at a high rate.

Phenom Hosted Apply played a key role as it simplifies what is often a cumbersome application process. Acting as a front end for complex Applicant Tracking System (ATS) workflows, it enables social apply, resume parsing, and automated data capture, reducing manual entry for candidates. The result is a smoother application experience that encourages completion, paired with full-funnel analytics, so teams can track performance and optimize. Candidates can apply without creating separate accounts, reducing drop-off and frustration.

“Eight out of ten people who land on a job page complete an application. That tells us friction is no longer the barrier.”

- Heather Leszczewicz, Recruitment Marketing Manager, Conagra Brands

Practical Takeaways for Lean HR Teams

A strong candidate experience starts with clarity, not volume. Templates create consistency without sacrificing local relevance, and iteration beats waiting for a perfect launch. Also super important? Ownership matters. When HR teams can manage and update their career sites directly, progress accelerates. 

Conagra’s experience shows that impactful candidate experience isn’t reserved for large teams with massive budgets; with the right platform and a clear vision, one person can make a difference at enterprise scale. The tools matter, but focus matters more. A few principles stand out: 

• Design for candidates first. Prioritize discovery, relevance, and clarity

• Template everything. Scalability comes from repeatable structures, not one-off pages

• Aim for progress, not perfection. Launch, learn, and iterate

• Use data to guide decisions. Track engagement, conversions, and return visits

• Empower self-service. A flexible CMS reduces reliance on support and agencies

Closing the Loop

For HR leaders, the question is no longer whether candidate experience matters — it’s whether the systems in place allow teams to improve it continuously. Conagra’s story shows what’s possible when technology supports, rather than complicates, the work.

By building a career site with the help of Design Studio designed for scale, flexibility, and real candidate behavior, Conagra turned a complex hiring environment into a measurable advantage. And they did it one practical step at a time.

Discover how Phenom Career Site and Design Studio turn your employer brand story into a seamless candidate journey that drives faster applications — book a demo today.