Find them on Twitter. You might or might not be able to find company tweets. But you might easily find employee tweets, which can be pretty valuable for you.

Ask your network. Just ask around among your friends and colleagues what they know about the company. Your recruiter is a good resource, too.

This might seem like a lot of work for just a phone interview, but it's very much worth doing. A phone interview is never "just" a phone interview. It's the first step in the hiring process. You won't get to the second step (the face-to-face interview) if you don't do a great job here.

Plus, what you find out about the company will help you do better, even in the phone interview, because you will understand more about the company and what their needs are and what they're looking for. That knowledge will help you shape your answers to be more impressive and more likely to move you forward in the process.

Why research the interviewer before your phone interview? Look at it this way: The job interview is a sales process in which you are both the product and the sales rep. One of the first rules of sales is "Know Your Customer." You can't sell effectively unless you know a little something about your customer. How annoying is it to have a sales rep come up to sell you something without even asking a few questions about your problems or issues? They have no idea what you're interested in, so they're not effective. The same principle is at work in the interview process.

What Should You Search For About the Interviewer?

You don't want to become a stalker... you just need some background on this person. Where are they from? How did they come up in the business? What hobbies do they have?

Some things are going to help you establish rapport. Maybe you share a hobby. Or maybe you'll find out that your interviewer is a member of PETA, so you'll decide not to talk about your love of hunting.

And some things will help you decide what to focus on in your call.