In an economy in which full-time opportunities are scarce, many job seekers have adopted a "take what you can get" attitude, accepting any interview they're offered in the hopes of landing a position rather than holding out for their dream job. Although a candidate may be qualified for a certain job, taking an interview doesn't necessarily mean his or her heart is set on that position.

While you shouldn't waste your time (or the employer's time) applying to and interviewing for a job in which you have no interest, you may find yourself submitting your resume for opportunities that are less than perfect for you. If your next interview is for a job you're not fully sold on, here are three reasons to give it your all anyway.

I’ll be honest,   wrote that intro on Saturday. The rest of this piece has been brewing in my brain since then, and in that time, I keep seeing evidence of the looming presence of accelerators everywhere I look. An invitation to another demo day, this time from Immobilienscout24′s YouIsNow; the first investment in a Berlin Microsoft Accelerator startup; even the EU is getting in on the act, with European Commissioner Neelie Kroes in Davos to announce the Startup Europe Partnership, an “accelerator” and think tank.

Image: http://siliconallee.com 

Quartz published an article Thursday laying out American venture capital deals across the country, based on CB Insights data. We already know that VC is skewed, with Silicon Valley pulling in by far more than any other major tech hubs in the U.S. – but the sheer degree of inequality of 2013's tech investments was nonetheless striking.

Image: http://inthecapital.streetwise.co 

Charles Brinbaum recently transitioned from working at startup Foursquare to the venture capital world where he is now a senior associate at Bessemer Venture Partners. In his guest post at VentureBeat, he gives four questions that anyone wishing to work with a startup should ask themselves before ultimately making that switch.

If at first you don’t succeed, you could be better off in the long run. It’s not as catchy as the actual saying, but it may be just as apt. As part of this week’s in-depth FOCUS report on second chances, we’re looking at the benefits of failure. And as WGBH News reporter Adam Reilly shows us, some area businesses are embracing failure in surprising ways.  

WHAT a difference a year can make.  When the doors opened at the Detroit Motor Show in 2013, visitors were greeted by an array of new hybrids, plug-ins and pure electric vehicles, and even got the opportunity to drive some of the green machines on a special course in the convention centre’s basement.  At this year's show, the spotlight shone elsewhere. 

Image: http://www.economist.com 

If there’s one trait that every entrepreneur needed to survive in the past five years, it was mental toughness. Without  a laser focus and daily commitment to growing a business in semi-frozen tundra, many owners could not have made it.

While it’s certainly not easy to start a business now, conditions look more hospitable than at any time in the recent past. Instead of the dismal small business surveys that bombarded my inbox the past few years, I’m getting some very positive ones.

Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

For most of its time as an IT industry buzzword, big data has been focused on numbers and letters. Sales numbers, medical results, weather, sensor readings, tweets, news articles — all very different, but also all relatively low-hanging fruit. Now, however, it looks like video is emerging as the next great source for companies to learn about consumers, and for everyone to learn about the world around them.

Image: Prism Skylabs 

In Silicon Valley, 2013 will be remembered as the year the idea of separating from the United States went viral.  There was the Stanford lecturer and investor, Balaji Srinivasan, who called for “Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit,” declaring to a large audience of elite entrepreneurs,”We need to build an opt-in society, outside the U.S., run by technology.”

Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Taiwan topped the global rankings in patent activity and was ranked as the 10th most innovative nation in the world and the fourth most innovative in Asia, according to the Global Innovation Rankings released by Bloomberg on Thursday.

According to Bloomberg, the patent activity category looked at resident patent filings per million residents and per US$1 million of research and development spent, as well as patents granted as a share of the world's total.

Image: Samuel Yin at a press event in Taipei, Jan. 28. (Photo/Fang Chun-che) 

It should come as no surprise that the University of Maryland has once again received an honorable accolade for its commitment to innovation. The College Park school has been dubbed the top most underrated public school for tech entrepreneurship by StartEngine, the state of Maryland has been named the top state for innovation and entrepreneurship, proving that UMD is chock full of talented individuals, and now UMD has been recognized with a national award for excellence in entrepreneurship education.

Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Bad Lip Reading team is at it again with another NFL takeover, just in time for the upcoming Super Bowl.

Bad Lip Reading is a hilarious YouTube channel that dubs absurd dialogue over sports clips, television shows, movies and even the U.S. presidential debate. The dubs let us see typically serious situations in new comedic light.

Is it possible MIT is feeling inadequate — insecure even?

That seems hard to imagine for the school that helped invent the transistor radio, radar, Technicolor, modern robotics, and essentially the field of biotechnology, and whose famous graduates include a Treasury secretary, Israeli prime minister, an astronaut who walked on the moon, and dozens of Nobel Prize winners.

But the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is facing increasing competition from around the corner and across the country.

Image: LANE TURNER/GLOBE STAFF - Rodney Brooks, founder of Rethink Robotics, spoke with students at MIT earlier this month as part of MIT’s first boot camp for students who hope to launch businesses 

Why is it so hard for older, educated Americans to find jobs after they’ve been laid off? 

There are multiple explanations for this, but certainly employer stereotypes and beliefs about older workers play an important role.

One set of stereotypes is directly about the purported effects of age. For example, that older workers are less energetic or less able to use new technologies.

Here's an image no swimmer would want to see in real life: a massive tiger shark with its jaws open, as if ready to devour an observer.

Though the picture makes it look like the photographer was the shark's next meal, no one was ever in danger, said David Shiffman, a doctoral candidate in marine biology at the University of Miami's Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy, who posted the photo on Twitter (but was not on the boat at the time the photo was taken).

Image: Cat Schultz, RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program 

The relentless parade of new technologies is unfolding on many fronts. Almost every advance is billed as a breakthrough, and the list of “next big things” grows ever longer. Not every emerging technology will alter the business or social landscape—but some truly do have the potential to disrupt the status quo, alter the way people live and work, and rearrange value pools. It is therefore critical that business and policy leaders understand which technologies will matter to them and prepare accordingly.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com 

AS soon as the CT scan was done, I began reviewing the images. The diagnosis was immediate: Masses matting the lungs and deforming the spine. Cancer. In my neurosurgical training, I had reviewed hundreds of scans for fellow doctors to see if surgery offered any hope. I’d scribble in the chart “Widely metastatic disease — no role for surgery,” and move on. But this scan was different: It was my own.

Image Courtesy of jesadaphorn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A SEEMINGLY un-American fact about America today is that for some groups, much more than others, upward mobility and the American dream are alive and well. It may be taboo to say it, but certain ethnic, religious and national-origin groups are doing strikingly better than Americans overall.

Image: http://www.nytimes.com 

The story is one we’ve heard before: plucky startup sails through seed fundraising, unfurls its wings, then runs into the brick wall of not enough venture and shatters into pieces. The numbers speak for themselves. There were 65 percent more seed-stage deals in 2013 than in 2012 while venture funding stayed relatively flat – 7.5 percent fewer dollars, 7 percent more deals.

Image Courtesy of Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Frankfort: Gov. Steve Beshear announced 26 high-tech Kentucky companies — a majority in Lexington — were awarded $6 million in state funds in 2013 as part of a program to support and attract technology-based small businesses to the commonwealth.

The companies are receiving funding through the state’s competitive Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Matching Funds program. Kentucky’s program matches all or part of federal SBIR-STTR awards received by Kentucky-based companies. It also provides a match to out-of-state companies, should they be willing to relocate to the state.

Image: http://www.kentucky.com - Gov. Steve Beshear announced the plan with U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers.