You feel prepared for the interview. You know the company, you know the job, and you know who you will talk to. You are 10 minutes into the interview and are unexpectedly blinded by questions for which you don’t know the answers.

You first grope for answers and try to “improvise,” but the interviewer senses your confusion and puts more pressure on you. Finally, when he is completely nervous, he realizes that the interview is almost over and his chances of landing the job have diminished minute by minute.

Sounds familiar? If you are Sarah Palin, you not only lived through this nightmare situation, but you also became the object of public ridicule. Thanks to the Internet and the comedic talents of Saturday Night Live’s Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, the entire world could see failure over and over again.

Imagine if all of us had our most embarrassing interview moments on all of television and the internet. Ms. Palin’s interview with Katie Couric is a plan for potential disasters that are expected to happen when you do not properly prepare for interviews. But your rebound during the vice presidential debate a few weeks later is a testament to what great interview preparation can do for you.

Sarah had been chosen a few weeks earlier by Republican presidential candidate John McCain to be his running mate for the vice presidency. As we all know, they went up against the eventual winner, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama and his running mate Joe Biden.

Sarah was automatically expected to be an intelligent and competent political player to face that level of competition. Every question that Katie Couric asked Ms. Palin should have been expected and prepared. Katie didn’t throw any questions at him that were ‘below the belt’ or even ‘out of left field’. They were legitimate questions that could have turned into real home runs for Sarah if she had been prepared.

You may remember Katie’s question asking Sarah to name some Supreme Court decisions that she did not agree with. While this may be a common question in interviews at certain law firms, you might see that one leaves the Governor of Alaska looking for the exits. Can you imagine that question coming up during your interview at the local bank?

However, a potential vice presidential candidate should have been prepared to answer Katie’s question. Your team should have anticipated it and had an answer ready and waiting. They did not anticipate the question, and as a result, Sarah went blind.

I use Sarah Palin’s experiences as an example precisely because they were so public and familiar to most of us. We can relate like we’ve all been in awkward interview situations. But what can you do to avoid the discomfort and potential damage to your job and career opportunities caused by unexpected and difficult interview questions?

What you do is exactly what Sarah Palin’s handlers did a few weeks later. To prepare her for the vice presidential debate against Joe Biden, her team worked hard. Before the debate, Sarah received a crash course on all the expected topics that are likely to be discussed in the debate and the possible questions. Also, she was prepared on how to incorporate talking points that she wanted to convey to voters in her responses. His improved preparation was obvious and well done under the circumstances and considering the time available.

Having prepared many thousands of interview candidates in my career, I knew what to look for. Most were textbook preparation techniques with discussion tactics included. The result was a reasonable show for Sarah, she did not win but she did not lose. He did what he had to do in this case. Considering expectations at the time, not losing was similar to a successful interview.

And make no mistake, that debate and the Katie Couric interview were interview situations for the position of Vice President of the United States. In this case, the American people were the hiring managers and they were closely watching the press interviews and discussions. In your job interviews, you should incorporate similar preparation techniques just without the debating tactics. Good preparation for the interview offers many advantages:

A) You will not lose job offers for not being able to answer clear and logical questions.

B) Preparation allows you to show yourself by turning tough questions in your favor.

C) Your confidence level in interviews will improve significantly.

D) You will feel more relaxed.

The keys to successfully answering tough job interview questions are anticipation, strategy, and practice. You must first take a close look at the situation and then anticipate the questions that may be asked. Consider the job, your experience, the company, and who you will be interviewing with. Second, you need to come up with a strategy to answer all the questions in a way that helps you achieve your goal of a job listing. Finally, you have to practice, practice, practice the answers until they become second nature.

This may seem like a lot of work and it can be, but having experience with the job at hand makes it easy to prepare. If you already have related work experience, you just have to prepare for difficult questions that are more general in nature. However, if you don’t have any related experience, you should also prepare for difficult job-specific questions, along with more general ones.

One great thing is that if you prepare correctly once, it becomes part of you. In future interviews, you will only need to customize your responses to fit another interview. You will not have to redo ninety percent of this preparation, just a few adjustments will suffice. With each interview, you will improve and the responses will flow more conversationally and unscripted.