In suggesting you try to improve your interview performance before you ever meet your prospective boss, don't think I'm recommending you make an effort to "psych out" your interviewer. Not at all. What I do propose is that you try to learn as much as you can beforehand about how to handle the situations that will make your interviews successful or not. This type of advance planning offers several advantages. If nothing else, your interviewer should sense that you are better informed than the next person, and that is likely to suggest to him that you're more interested in the job than your competition. More than that, however, advance preparation can help you guide your interviewer toward a more positive interview. Many executives are not used to meeting prospective employees on a regular basis. They don't know what questions to ask; what directions to pursue. If you are "buttoned up," beforehand you may be able to help your prospective boss use your thirty or sixty minutes together to maximize its value to him as well as you. You can't help your interviewer unless you have certain information under your belt relevant to the interview before you walk in the door.
Gathering this data may seem a difficult assignment at first. But keep in mind that interview preparation gets easier and easier each time you do it, since that hardest part is locating the sources and learning how to use them. After you've prepared for a couple of interview sessions, it will take less time to prepare for those that follow. Remember, too, that you don't need to prepare for meetings with every company you contact initially by letter, or with every company you learn has an opening through an executive recruiter or employment agency. Reserve your preparation time for those companies where an interview is actually scheduled.
What types of preparation should you pursue? You should have basic idea about the company.
Learn about the company, its present and its future
If you are meeting with someone at a publicly owned company, there are a great many sources of information about the firm available to you. The annual report-and particularly the president's message in it- will tell you where the company has been, and more important, where it thinks it's going. You may be interviewing for a job just because the company is pursuing new businesses or trying to shore up weaker ones. You'll find the profit-and-loss section useful, too, since it may clue you in on what the company's past problems have been and suggest the types of strategies that the company may be thinking about for the future. Where can you get an annual report? Call the corporate secretary of the company you're going to interview and ask for one. Or even the secretary of the person you are planning to see. So what if your prospective boss learns you've called for an annual report? Doing so shows your interest and professionalism. You can find annual reports on file in many business libraries, too. If there are not many days between setting up your interview and taking it, the library may be your best bet. Some larger brokerage firms also maintain annual reports of the more actively traded companies as well. If not, they will at least have a one-page write-up of the company's performance from Standard & Poor's Register of Corporations, Directors, and Executives, or from another source. These write-ups are not as good as annual reports, though, since the flavor of an annual report can often provide a better clue as to why you're being interviewed.
There are plenty of other sources of worthwhile information about companies-even privately owned companies - that you might consider. Often corporations are written up in business magazines like Forbes, Fortune, Business Week, etc., and newspapers like the Wall Street Journal. Articles are most likely to appear if the company is pursuing new directions, which could involve the position you're applying for. Often the articles are "placed" by the companies themselves through their P.R. firms and reflect the company line. Many libraries have the F&S Index and other indexes to business articles that list "mentions" of companies. They're much like the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, and just as easy to use.
