Hiring Your First Demand Gen Manager

The first demand gen manager at a Series A or Series B company is doing a job no role description captures. They are part campaign manager, part marketing ops, part content strategist, part account-based marketer. Hire wrong and the function stalls for 12 months.

The profile that works: 4-6 years of experience, has worked at a B2B SaaS or B2B services company that ran a measurable demand engine, has hands-on HubSpot or Marketo experience (not just managed someone who used it), has owned a pipeline number, has written briefs for paid agencies and content writers. Bonus: has worked in a regulated or technical category.

The profile that fails: 10+ years at large enterprise (does not know how to do scrappy execution), former agency without in-house experience (knows campaigns, not pipeline), brand-only background (cannot run lead gen), or ops-heavy without strategy (cannot prioritize). Avoid all four.

The interview process should include: a portfolio walkthrough of their last campaign with the actual pipeline number generated, a HubSpot or Marketo screen-share where they build a workflow live, and a written exercise (write the brief for a paid LinkedIn campaign targeting our ICP). The candidate who shines on all three is the right hire. The one who can pitch but cannot execute is the most common bad hire.