As usual, Don Goodman hit it out of the park with his post titled You Must Remember This: Information You Must Have before the Interview.  

As I was reading through it I had two thoughts:

1. He is right on - if you have this information before you go into an interview, and you know what to do with it (how to ask questions, how to use it in your answers), you will be considerably more impressive than your competition.  You'll feel more confident.  You'll be able to "talk shop" with the interviewer.  You can "own" the interview!
2. Just looking at the sheer breadth and depth of information I must know is overwhelming.  Where do I find that information?  How do I keep track of it?  If I had to do this once a year for one company, that's okay.  But hopefully, as a job seeker, I'm going to interviews multiple times a month.  Doing this research and collecting the data is more than overwhelming, isn't it?

To address the WHERE do you get this information from, make Google and LinkedIn your friend.  You can get information through searches on Google that will lead you to Yahoo! Finance and other reputable sources.  You can find information on sites like Crunchbase.com (at not cost).  You need to spend time on LinkedIn and look for company and contact information.  You will do a lot of looking, researching, analyzing, and connecting the dots.

In this post I want to focus on HOW TO store the information you collect.  I'll use my company's tool, JibberJobber.com, in the examples, but recognize you can also use Salesforce, ACT!, Goldmine, a spreadsheet, sticky notes (if you don't care about "searching" for data later), etc.  As a reminder, JibberJobber is a relationship manager designed specifically for you, in a job search, to keep track of this type of stuff.

Don says to understand the organizations mission.  In JibberJobber, you'll set up a Company profile, where you can put the company name, address, URL and any other info you want about the company.  I would put the mission, whether it is a mission statement (usually so ambiguous it doesn't really mean anything to outsiders, and many times insiders don't know what the mission statement is!) in the NOTES field on the Company Profile.  

Don uses the example of when he hired, he would ask "What do you know about us?"  I would put that question, and your brilliant answer, in the "Interview Prep" area.  There's a section titled Question/Answer where you can put that - you can categorize each question/answer specific to an industry or a company, so you can get a list of Interview Prep responses by company.

Don says to check out the decision maker and interviewer.  In JibberJobber, set up a Contact Profile on the person, and associate them to the Company profile. He says "You should always get as much information about the decision maker and interviewer through LinkedIn."  On that Contact Profile you can store that information in various places: 

1. In individual Log Entries, which is what I would do most often,
2. In one big Log Entry (which I might be inclined to do, if I do a lot of research on the person),
3. In the Notes field,
4. In custom fields, so the information shows up on the top of the screen (as opposed to scrolling down through the Log Entries),
5. In a document that I associate with the contact (I wouldn't do this because then you have to open the doc... I prefer to see it all right there on that Contact page.

Doing research can lead to more information, more contacts, more data points.  Trust me: start to store this stuff early, or after a while you'll have a lot of clutter you are trying to manage in your brain.

Don says to Prepare supporting points to demonstrate how your experience, skills and strengths are relevant and will benefit the employer. Once again, go to the Interview Prep area and store this information.  I've seen job seekers (myself included) try to "wing it," thinking we don't need to prepare this information, and that we can interview fine without it.  The difference between someone who has prepared and someone who is winging it is amazing.  Prepare, and amaze the interviewer!  Store your responses in the Interview Prep section of JibberJobber, and polish the responses, and you'll do much, much better than the person who wings it.

Don says to have a list of references ready.  In JibberJobber, make a Contact Profile for each of your references, and tag them as "job_search_reference," or get more specific, like "health_care_reference."  You can even put "_permission" at the end, if you want to show that you have gotten permission from them (like Don recommends).

Even writing this I'm overwhelmed with the amount of data and preparation goes into this.  I know that putting the information down anywhere, even JibberJobber, is complex.  But here's the deal: you are a professional, and you should treat your job search as if it is your job.   

If you were doing this for an employer, to secure a recurring $50,000/year contract, would you prepare for it?  You bet you would.  You'd spend a lot of time to make sure you are as prepared as possible.

That's what you are doing - whether it's for the $30k/year job, or the 50k/year job, or the $150k/year job. 

Put the time in, do it right, and be empowered before you go into the interview!

To learn more about JibberJobber, jump on the next user webinar.