Holocene is hiring its first dedicated growth person, and the bar is unusually high. The Demand Gen / Growth Founding Hire role is not a traditional marketing position. It requires someone who can generate qualified pipeline from scratch, at a brand nobody knows yet, targeting some of the most difficult buyers in B2B.
Getting this role starts with a resume that proves you have done exactly that. Here is what you need to know before you write a single word.
Understand What Holocene Actually Needs
The job is specific. Holocene wants 8 to 12 qualified conversations per month between the founder and supply chain or procurement leaders at target manufacturers. You own everything before that meeting. The founder closes.
This is not demand generation in the traditional sense. There are no paid campaigns to optimize, no brand awareness budgets, and no warm inbound leads to cherry-pick. Every meeting you book comes from cold or semi-warm outbound, smart research, and writing that actually earns a reply.
Your resume needs to reflect that reality directly. Generic growth marketing experience will not get you an interview here.
What to Highlight on Your Resume
Outbound Results at Unknown Brands
The single most important thing on your resume is proof that you booked meetings at companies nobody had heard of. Holocene is early stage. The job posting explicitly calls out that every touchpoint needs to earn attention at an unknown brand.
Do not just list your job title and company. Show the numbers. How many meetings did you book per month? What was your reply rate on cold outreach? How many touches did your best sequence take?
- Booked X qualified meetings per month through cold outbound
- Achieved X% reply rate on personalized email sequences
- Built pipeline from zero at a pre-revenue or early-stage company
- Targeted VP-level and C-suite buyers at mid-market or enterprise accounts
Research and Personalization Skills
Holocene wants someone who can research a target account deeply before writing a single word. This means understanding supply chain structures, reading recent news, mapping org charts, and identifying the right buyer, whether that is a VP of Supply Chain, Head of Procurement, COO, or Plant Director.
Highlight any experience researching complex industries or niche verticals. If you have worked in manufacturing, logistics, supply chain software, or industrial B2B, say so clearly. That context matters enormously in this role.
Multi-Channel Outreach Experience
The role requires running sequences across email, LinkedIn, and warm intro paths simultaneously. Your resume should demonstrate experience managing multi-touch, multi-channel outbound campaigns rather than single-channel blasts.
- Experience with HubSpot CRM and pipeline management
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator or similar prospecting tools
- Writing cold emails that generate replies, not just opens
- Coordinating warm introductions through founder or investor networks
How to Tailor Your Resume for This Role
Lead With a Strong Summary
Open your resume with a two to three sentence summary that speaks directly to early-stage outbound. Avoid generic phrases like "results-driven marketer" or "growth hacker with a passion for pipelines." Those phrases say nothing.
Instead, write something that signals you understand the specific challenge. Something like: "B2B outbound specialist with three years booking VP-level meetings at pre-product-market-fit startups. Focused on hyper-personalized, research-led sequences targeting manufacturing and supply chain leaders."
That kind of summary tells the recruiter exactly who you are in ten seconds.
Reframe Your Experience Around Outcomes
Every bullet point on your resume should connect to a measurable outcome. Do not describe tasks. Describe results. The difference matters enormously at a company like Holocene, where accountability is baked into the job description.
Weak: "Managed outbound email campaigns targeting enterprise buyers."
Strong: "Built and ran cold outbound sequences targeting VP Supply Chain at mid-market manufacturers, booking 9 qualified meetings in month one with zero brand recognition."
That level of specificity is what gets resumes read at early-stage companies.
Mirror the Language in the Job Posting
Holocene uses specific language throughout the job description. Words like "qualified conversations," "ICP accounts," "hyper-personalized outbound," and "value exchanges" appear for a reason. Use them naturally in your resume where accurate.
This is not about keyword stuffing. It signals that you read the posting carefully and understand the vocabulary of the work. Recruiters at startups notice when candidates speak their language.
ATS Tips for This Application
Even at startups, many companies use applicant tracking systems to filter resumes before a human sees them. Holocene uses Himalayas to manage applications, and formatting matters.
Keep Formatting Clean and Simple
Avoid tables, text boxes, headers with graphics, or multi-column layouts. ATS systems often misread complex formatting, which means your best bullet points might never get parsed correctly. Use a single-column format with clear section headers.
Use Relevant Keywords Naturally
Based on the job posting, the following terms belong in your resume if they accurately reflect your experience:
- Demand generation
- Outbound prospecting
- Cold email / cold outreach
- HubSpot CRM
- Pipeline management
- B2B SaaS or B2B startup
- Supply chain or procurement (if applicable)
- LinkedIn outreach
- Personalization at scale
- Founding hire or early-stage growth
Save Your File Correctly
Submit your resume as a PDF unless the application specifically requests a Word document. Name the file professionally, something like FirstName-LastName-Resume.pdf rather than resume-FINAL-v3-updated.pdf.
What Recruiters and Founders Look for in This Role
Evidence of Independent Thinking
This is a founding hire. Holocene is not looking for someone who executes a playbook handed down by a VP of Marketing. They want someone who builds the playbook. Your resume should show moments where you figured something out without a template.
Think about times you identified a new channel, tested an angle nobody had tried, or cracked a difficult account through creative research. Those moments belong on your resume, even if the company or context was small.
Comfort With Ambiguity
Early-stage growth roles involve constant uncertainty. Metrics shift. The ICP evolves. What worked last month stops working. Recruiters at Holocene will look for signals that you have thrived in that kind of environment before, not just survived it.
Frame your experience to show how you adapted when conditions changed. Did you rebuild a sequence that stopped performing? Did you pivot targeting when the original ICP did not convert? Show that you can operate without perfect information.
Writing Quality
The job posting explicitly says Holocene screens every application for AI-generated content. That same scrutiny will likely extend to how they evaluate your resume. Your writing needs to sound like a human being who has done this work, not a template filled with buzzwords.
Every word on your resume should feel earned. Cut anything vague. Replace it with something specific, something only you could have written because it actually happened to you.
One Final Note Before You Apply
The application itself is part of the hiring process at Holocene. The job posting asks for a short note explaining why the role fits you, plus one real example of how you booked a meeting at a company with no brand recognition. The example must name the company, the person, the angle, and the number of touches it took.
Your resume and your application note need to work together. The resume proves your track record. The note proves you can do the specific thing this job requires right now, today, before you have even started.
Treat both with equal care. Apply for the Holocene Demand Gen / Growth Founding Hire role directly at https://himalayas.app/companies/holocene/jobs/demand-gen-growth-founding-hire-1528154418.
