Online profiles (posted on networking sites, your own job-search site, and social spaces) are an excellent complement to your resume. Just be sure to leave at least a few questions unanswered.
I understand the reasoning of preemptively answering interview questions to save the employer (and candidate) the hassle of going through these inevitable standard interview questions in the interview. Very noble, but you’re forgetting something.
However much you prepare for the interview, you’re never supposed to appear as though you’ve practiced your answers. Canned responses sound and seem false. Savvy hiring managers have read some of the interview coaching literature that’s out there and most likely they’ve interviewed for jobs themselves. Therefore, they too know how to develop answers to “trick questions”.
Written answers (i.e. explanations posted on your website or via email) can be perceived as canned responses. After all, you could have taken hours to write these bullet points. You could have had someone else write these bullet points. Or, you could have copied these bullet points out of a book.
The whole purpose of the interview–in fact the reason it’s persisted over time–is that nothing compares to a face-to-face meeting. Interviewers want to see you think on your feet. They want to catch you off guard so they can catch a glimpse of the real you, not the overly-well-prepared-you.
There’s a bit of a tap dance here.
While it’s important you seem well prepared, you should not seem well rehearsed. Even if asked a question to which you have an immediate (and pre-prepared) answered, you should pause for a moment to think your answer through–or more accurate, let your interviewer believe that you’re thinking through this very tough question.
If it appears as though you’re answering from the gut and not from the notes in your briefcase, you’ll impress your interviewer that much more.
