When interviewing potential employees, what do you think is more important; what is on the resume or how much the interviewee knows about the company?

Neither one of these are a useful indicator of future employee success.  In fact if your interview is unstructured then whole thing may be statistically no better than a coin toss for finding a good employee fit. [1] Highly structured interviews fare a little better, but the best technique I've seen studied in the research is to have the prospect perform a work sample. As for culture I say phooey.  Tell the prospect about the culture in the interview and answer their questions.  Humans are tremendously adaptable, especially when immersed in a strong culture.  If the person has some reason to believe they won't fit in the culture you'll have to trust them to self select out.  However, likely they honestly won't know until they try it out. [1] http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mamcdani/Publications/McDaniel_Whetzel_Schmidt_Maurer%20(1994).pdf

So these are apples and oranges. Your resume demonstrates your experience and aptitude for the position. Your knowledge of the company demonstrates work ethic and culture fit. For some employers and/or some positions work ethic and culture fit are much more important than experience. This may be because the job is entry level and not much training is needed or that the company provides intense training for the postion or as a matter of course. For most employers and/or positions experience is more important. But there is no hard and fast rule. The most important traits or behaviors will vary from company to company, from position to position and, frankly, from recruiter to recruiter. The agency gave you a great tip, so do lots of research amd have lots of questions about the company loaded up. But going forward his/her advice may not ring as true. Still, at least in my opinion, you can't do too much research anyway.

Whilst it's important to know about a company before entering the interview it should never be as important as a well written, factual resume. Almost every candidate possesses the ability to spend 30 minutes on the Internet to memorise certain facts about a company prior to interview, however, it takes YEARS of solid experience in whatever realm (employment, education, extra-curricular, family, etc.) to really reveal what a candidate is about. This is then verified by the interviewer and of course, researching the company beforehand really does help you as it primarily reveals INITIATIVE and INTEREST. Just remember though, you don't win an interview by telling the company you know x amount about them, you win an interview due to your resume, which is much more important. Best of luck in your interview(s)!

Your resume and the interview serve two different purposes.  The resume gets you the interview and the interview gets you the job.  Most hiring managers will tell you that once you're at the interview stage, their primary concern is your fit with their organization.

Unfortunately, interviews and their structure vary wildly. It is super dependent on who is interviewing you, what job you are interviewing for, and their individual desires in a candidate. Some places care a lot about pedigree and references, some care only about how you did in the interview, some care more about their connection with you than your actual skills, some care about how you look and act, etc. There are a lot of places that have no 'standard' way of evaluating a candidate. Having spoken to many companies about this, often there are many problems plauging their hiring process that make it much easier to say 'no' than 'yes' to a candidate. The best thing you can do is find out as much as possible about the people who work at the company, and ask them specifically what they are looking for. If they give you a vague or cliche answer ( i.e. looking for massive experience, good cultural fit, leader, proven, etc) it can be an indicator that they have a crap hiring process or are unsure of what they need. If they give you specifics (i.e. this role requires you to have knowledge of this skill, you are going to be speaking with these people so you will need to do this and this, we need someone to handle this specific project) then it can be an indicator that they are trying to fill a specific role or solve a specific problem, in which case your dialogue should focus around how you can solve that. Unfortunately (again) its possible that there is a disparity between what the hiring manger tells you they are looking for and what they are actually looking for, which is a problem in its own right. Often they will overvalue 'feel' to experience, i.e. did they connect with you versus do you have proven skills.

It's not about either. It's about the pieces in your portfolio. Creatively display your proven experience and what you will be able to offer the employer. I got hired by sending out a MailChimp campaign, and by creating this eBook to show off my skill set and personality. http://www.scribd.com/doc/106569751/Lauren-eBook

Your CV is your primary sales document so in rough terms, you will be selected for an interview based on your CV and your educational and work background. Knowing about the company and being able to demonstrate this knowledge is crucial at the actual interview stage. It is not unknown, for instance, when an interviewer asked 'so can you tell me what we do' and if you are applying for the financial services jobs, then they may ask you about the recent deals a company have closed, M&A activity. If interviewing for publicly listed companies, it may be worth having a look at their financial statements for revenue figures and other data. Talk to the current/former employeers (seek them out on LinkedIn for instance), search the Internet extensively for the company information and you should be ready. Dasha http://www.ukcareercoaching.com