The first part of preparing for any job interview happens long before you ever step foot in that office. You've got to do your research. Now, it constantly amazes me how many people will spend 2468 hours a day, clicking and responding to job requests sending out a resume. They'll spend all that time and have a week, they've spent dozens and dozens of hours sending out resumes. And now you've finally got a job interview. Maybe it's only the first interview in three weeks, and you spend almost no time doing research for that interview.

Now, you've got to do a lot more than simply going to the organization's website, of course, you have to go to their website. And you need to look at every page on that website. You certainly need to look at their press page to see what's going on in the news. What developments what new acquisitions, good news, bad news. You also need to Google the company and find out other news about what are other people saying about this company? What's the good news?

What's the bad news? If you know the name of the person interviewing you, Google that person, find out what you can look at their profile on LinkedIn, see if you can find out what their interests are, how long have they been with the company, it's virtually impossible to know too much about a company or organization you're working with. But don't just stop there. You've got to do research on their competitors. First of all, you got to know who their competitors are. And then you've got to go to their websites, you've got to research news about them.

You need a strong strong sense of where this company fits into the overall competitive landscape. Because without that, you're not going to be able to have an intelligent conversation with the organization and with the person you're meeting with. If you don't have that, if you just sort of walk in and when they say any questions for us All Tell me about your company and what you do. If you do that, you're basically finished. Certainly, you've destroyed your chances for any highly competitive job that's well paid. You're showing you don't have interest in their company, everybody, I don't care how boring the company or the industry is.

They want someone applying to them who has a keen interest in what they're doing. So what will be a motivated employee, someone who's happy to show up, so you've got to do your research. Go to their website, check out their press page, look at any new innovations, make sure you really understand the products they offer, the services they offer. Get a strong sense of the competitive landscape, who are their customers, see if you can find out who their biggest customer is. Who's their newest customer, who are their competitors. Also do some research on the top executives of the And even if you're not meeting with them, the more you know about what they do, what they like, what they don't like, even the charities they're involved with, it can't hurt.

So try to have some balance between the amount of time you spent sending out resumes, looking at what ads online or in person or in the real world networking, versus preparation for that job interview, most people have it really, really skewed 40 hours of sending out resumes for every half hour of research. That's not the way to do it. And if a company isn't worth spending an hour researching, maybe it's not even worth your while to drive downtown or take mass transit, to go to the interview. You've got to really know what you're getting into to increase your odds of facing that interview. And to go in with confidence knowing you've got something to talk about. You're not Just some ignorant person who's going to waste their time?

Who says the same generic things. So tell me about your company and what are you looking for? That's awful stuff. You don't want to be like that. You want to be seen as a real industry play, even if you're 22 years old, for that matter, 18. And it's your first job you want to be seen legitimately.

As someone who knows about the industry knows about the issues affecting this organization. And it's not like when I was graduating from college 30 years ago, it's easy now. It's all there at your fingertips. You just have to spend time doing research online. Ideally, maybe talking to some people, you may even know people already work for the company even better. But if you don't, at least do the research online so you really know what you're talking about.

So that's your homework right now. Pick a company you'd like to have an interview with and do it Some research, investigate everything about them on their own website. Come up with the three or four organizations you think are their competitors. Find out what you think are their top clients. Do that research right now.