You see it all the time—they dash in from the parking lot with no particular plan on how to engage their potential employer. Or they relentlessly work the phones only to discover that they’ve offered nothing more than hollow chitchat.Be prepared!  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  After all, the Boy Scouts have been teaching this idea to kids for almost 100 years.  So why in the world would most job seekers show up for an interview unprepared?

NEXT Week’s session:  Thursday, December 17th… LAST Session of 2015…Closing The Deal II: Interview tactics, including POST-Offer negotiation.

Here are ten keys that you can use to create your own successful pre-interview habits:

1. Learn about their business—their products/services, customers, industry trends, key initiatives, financial status, and competition.
2. Discover something about the person you are meeting with. Google them, talk to their colleagues, or call others in the industry who have insights. Use a targeted organization networking approach.
3. Identify the benefits of your value to this potential employer. The benefits need to be clear, concise, credible and compelling!
4. Prepare ideas that hold value for your ‘next employer.’ Your language needs to reflect a focus on solutions…meeting their needs!
5. Plan questions that establish your expertise and get them to think in new ways. The more thought provoking your questions are, the more your prospective employers will respect and remember you!
6. Communicate an outline of your meeting prior to the actual interview. Ask them to review and provide you with feedback.
7. Getting their buy-in before you walk in the door is critical, and it demonstrates your commitment to delivering value.
8. Identify the resistance that you are most likely to encounter and prepare ideas, case studies, testimonials or expert opinions to help reduce their reluctance to move forward.
9. Plan how you will close the interview appointment and decide what agreements you need to ask for.
10. Remind yourself to be warm, friendly and courteous to everyone that you encounter. Your potential employer is constantly deciding how much they like you, how much they believe you, how much they trust you and how much confidence they have in you. It takes time—often a long time—to build your personal brand. And it takes only a few seconds for it to be destroyed.