4 traits to clinch a great marketing hire An insight to what some leading employers look for when they are on a hiring spree.

A prospective employer looks for a hire with a great deal of fire! In sync as it may sound, a marketing professional must have a vision from the field, specifically with an experience in ground-level fallacies. Being just smart with a great college degree continues to lose sheen in the contemporary era of workplace expectations.

Justin Gray of Empowering marketers says, "your education is not going to make my clients ecstatic about the work we do or put my company on the front end of innovation. What companies need in today's world is talent with the ability to think, do, and execute in any circumstance."

Here's an insight to what some leading employers look for when they are on a hiring spree:

Often, an employer wants someone who has failed. If you've failed, it means you went full throttle for a dream. You may be this job candidate who tried to start a company but perhaps came crashing down due to something/someone unavoidable. Perhaps, they tried to introduce a product or pitch a marketing plan with no vision and they fell flat. Many may think of failure as an embarrassment. But, in reality failure is good because someone actually attempted to move beyond the school textbook. And, it means they had the audacity to propel an idea and then they actually had the bravado to intensely pursue it.

The employers admire this streak because if the candidate has been through failure, it means they tried something big.

Employers pick individuals who have been in the field. Beyond academics, the most precious lessons dawn upon an individual is through experiential learning. Many-a-time startups are pretty low on budgets for high-flying experiments. At this point in time the employees who try their hands at innovative things and try to scourge success measures from the scratch end up with a lot more experience than their prospective competitors. This helps them succeed over their colleagues and helps them shine and rise above in peer-to-peer situations.

As the maxim goes, experience is the best teacher!

Employers want to see references that aren't professors.

People who had vision and the idea to pull off impressive campaigns never became professors. They're out there chiseling the age-old conventions and shaping the overused ideas.

There was never a set formula to a successful business. The success lesson in a book always changes in meaning with the change in the title's author. The true essence of a success mantra can only be shared by a team that has tasted defeat before.

Geniuses sometimes invest in the worst of plans. Big companies resort to bad calls. Prospective employees who try to hold on to all their cards are rarely considered for hiring. Employers now look for people who have mentors from outside the schoolyard.

Those are hired first who don't need to be told how great they are.

Gone are the days when validation from employer and your brand was an essential for the next step in an employee's growth trajectory. A professional with a vision is unlikely to work for you for 20 years. None of the employers look for an employee like that anymore.

This employee behavior of overtly long commitments is stagnation not consistency.

They appreciate performance review but approval from boss isn't be-all and end-all for them. The neo-employee is a brand in self.

The contemporary employers spend little time on resumes now but try to mull their decision by looking at their LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. The authentic nature of an employer comes to fore when the employer gets to understand what he likes, shares or writes. Who are they connecting with and who do they influence?