Most job interviews include at least one negative question: What is your biggest weakness? What was your least favorite job? What is the biggest mistake you made? The interviewer is probing for vulnerabilities that might hinder your ability to do the job. At the same time, the interviewer is looking for improvement – everyone comes with deficiencies; are you self-aware enough to acknowledge yours and coachable enough to improve them? As with all interview questions, the objective is to assess whether to hire you. Prepare your mistake or failure story in advance of your next job interview using this two-step process:

Pick the right story. As an experienced professional, you have multiple stories to choose from – hopefully not too many mistakes, but certainly more than one. If you don’t pick a mistake in advance, you will default to the one that you remember – an emotional story, perhaps something that is still raw and unfinished. This isn’t a good choice because you don’t want to get rattled during the interview. More important, you don’t want an unfinished story because you need a clear mistake with a clear resolution. What did you learn? How did you turn the situation around? Also, you must have the right role in the story. When I was a recruiter, a candidate who was a project manager told me about a client that cancelled a project but eventually began working with his firm again. Yes, this is an example of a project gone bad and then turned around, but there was no direct involvement by this candidate or specific lesson learned, so it wasn’t a good example to use.

Read the second step in my latest post for Life Reimagined at Work: How To Answer “What’s Your Biggest Mistake?”

This is really a two-part question: 1) job search in a down market; an 2) job search when you’ve been out for a while.

Regarding job search in a down economy, this means that employers are going to be pickier about who they hire. So job seekers in a down market need to be even more competitive to attract employers. Employers are looking for reasons to keep you out, so you have to make an even stronger case about why you should be hired.

Regarding job search when you have been out of work, what employers fear is that your skills, expertise and/or network will be out of date. You need to focus on what you’ve been doing during your unemployment to show this won’t be the case — volunteer work, consulting projects, activity with a professional associate, attending a class.

Put these two things together and you’ll see that an out-of-work job seeker in a down market has to even more assertively emphasize that being unemployed doesn’t mean being unqualified or out of date. You have to make an even more passionate, compelling case that your activity while you were out is relevant to the job you are looking for.

Kim Loan Duong is 32, and onto her third business. She is co-owner of Empire Society, which she co-founded in 1999 and organizes events worldwide.  She then branched out into Prestigious Models in 2002, North America’s premiere Asian and Pan-Asian modeling agency.  In 2012, she launched a third time with Image Powerhouse, an entertainment production studio specializing in fashion, beauty and lifestyle, as well as new divisions for Prestigious Models in Fashion, Print, Commercial, TV and Film. I met Duong at an event hosted at Image Powerhouse and loved her story for how she broke through some of the myths that hold back other aspiring entrepreneurs:

Myth #1: You need to have it all figured out before you start
A year after launching Empire Society, Duong started noticing a pattern of client requests for Spokesmodels (or Brand Ambassadors). Prestigious Models was born to capture the unmet demand for Asian models. Yes, it helps to have a plan in advance, but it also pays to be opportunistic and respond to a need you might not have thought of before.

Myth #2: You need to expand quickly
Duong was running Empire Society for three years before adding Prestigious Models. It took another ten years before Duong tacked on her third business. Although, Duong always had an interest in fashion and consumer-facing brands, the main industries for Empire Society and Prestigious Models were Poker, Gaming and Automotive industries.  She didn’t launch Image Powerhouse until these two businesses were self-sustaining and Duong could make her move to New York. You don’t have to keep adding new offerings, sometimes not even for years. (In these days of quick-start online businesses, with $MM valuations seemingly overnight, I found this measured growth particularly refreshing!)

Myth #3:  Entrepreneurship is more suitable for certain types of people
Maybe you think an entrepreneur has to be particularly creative, or a risk-taker, or from a certain background. Duong battled with the third limiting belief: she is Vietnamese/ Chinese and had strong cultural pressures to get a traditional job. “In the Asian culture, we’re raised to get a good education and become doctors, lawyers and bankers,” Duong explained. Duong even got her real estate license while building Prestigious Models to fulfill her parents’ wishes for a more conventional career. Yet, she couldn’t balance two jobs and finally had an emotional meeting with her parents and siblings to ask for support. It wasn’t an overnight resolution, but the family is now so supportive they even help out with her current projects. You don’t have to be a certain type of person to be an entrepreneur. (As an Asian-American myself, I can relate firsthand to the strong cultural expectations that favor traditional employment over entrepreneurship, so this part of Duong’s story is so rewarding to share especially during Asian-Pacific American Awareness Month.)

Kim Loan Duong exemplifies in some ways the quick-start, young entrepreneur – running three businesses by her early 30’s. But her journey also bucks some of the conventionally-held wisdom about entrepreneurship, and in this way, makes business success more accessible to the everyday woman. You don’t have to have the lightning-bolt idea. You don’t have to grow quickly. Entrepreneurship is an available option to everyone.

Create opportunities, make things happen and see your vision turn into a reality.  Don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone.  Get a mentor or coach, someone to hold you accountable. Surround yourself with people that believe in you and want to see you become successful. – Kim Loan Duong

The line between entrepreneurship and traditional employment is virtually nonexistent in today’s job market. Sure, if you look at capital-intensive businesses where you need office space, heavy equipment, or a large staff, these entrepreneurs take on a financial investment and risk that employees do not. Look at service, knowledge-based professions, though, where many jobs are, and business-building entrepreneurs and job-seeking employees have much in common. In fact, job seekers would be wise to adopt the best entrepreneurial strategies:

Develop a unique brand. Entrepreneurs know they need to market how their offering is unique and valuable. They join trade associations, maintain an active online presence, and have marketing collateral (e.g., brochures, business cards) to showcase their offer. The best entrepreneurs don’t just hang out an advertisement and hope that people buy. They realize that people are inundated with advertising messages. Job seekers need to adopt the same proactive stance to their marketing. Employers are the buyers too, and they’re inundated with unsolicited resumes. You cannot just hang out your resume; you need to network, use social media, and have ready examples of your work. You need to focus on the specific, unique value employers would derive from your offer.

Read two more ways traditional employment and entrepreneurship overlap and how embracing the overlap can help you navigate today’s market at Work Reimagined: How To Land a Job: Channel Your Inner Entrepreneur.

Success at a job requires more than matching your skills to the job requirements. You have to be in an environment where you can do your best work. Many people need to like their colleagues and management. In other words, the culture of the company contributes to whether you will thrive. Here are seven steps to research company culture.

Define what you mean by culture. Is it how the company treats its employees or also its community, consultants, vendors and customers? Is it how career path is determined (e.g., whether the company promotes from within or allows its employees to move laterally)? Is it whether employees tend to work in teams or alone? Be specific: What matters to others may not matter as much or at all to you.

Decide how to measure what matters. How will you evaluate what you find? If you want a company that treats its employees well, does this mean pay transparency, unexpected shows of appreciation, or consistent adoption of employee suggestions? If you don’t know how you’ll measure the culture you’re looking for, you won’t know it when you see it or even where to look.

Check published sources. Review the company’s website: how does it describe the company and its leadership? Is the tone straight professional, conversational or irreverent? Look at press releases and media mentions for the company: what is highlighted? If you want a company that values giving back to its community, is there more than a promise to do this, i.e. real programs with real results? You want to see how the company positions itself but also how it is perceived by others, such as the media.

Read the other 4 steps at Work Reimagined: 7 Steps To Research Company Culture.

6. Don’t be afraid to change your plans

• Neal M. Bottom of Marble Arch Consultants, Inc.

“Your initial idea of the business will likely not be where you end up.
  Be open and flexible to the evolution of your product or service. Remain 
responsive to your customers and the market as this calibration will help
 strengthen your overall offering.”

• Caroline Ceniza-Levine of  SixFigureStart, a career coaching service

“With multiple businesses under my belt now, I can look back and say the best
 moves I made were opportunistic – following what the market was offering me, 
rather than trying to impose my assumptions and strategies. Launching a
 business always means you’ll veer off your plan. Yes I have a loose plan but
 then I follow the money. When people spend their money, that’s the best kind
 of feedback you can get.”

Read the other tips in Nerd Wallet: Seven Tips From Successful Entrepreneurs: What They Wish They Had Known.

When you’re actively looking for a job or otherwise tapping your network, it’s easy to get a sense of whether your networking is effective — people either help or they don’t. When you’re gainfully employed and may not be reaching out to your network regularly, how do you know if your connections are strong?

Focus on quantity and quality: quality means you have people who are willing to help you (with company information, feedback on an issue, a recommendation); quantity means you have enough people to ask.

Remember that even if you have strong relationships (quality), not everybody can help on every issue so you still need to know a variety of people (quantity).

Alternatively, even if you know a lot of people (quantity), you may not know them well enough (quality) to ask!

From Evelyn Greenslade: The only real failure is the failure to try, and the measure of success is how we cope with the disappointment, as we all must. Networking is our Step 4 in the job search. It’s something people fear so much, they don’t even try it, or worse they don’t learn how to do it correctly. Networking is not about asking for something, it’s about giving more than you get. Exceptional networking questions for people you know nothing about: “how did you get your start in this business?”, “what do you like most about what you do?” Watch how the conversation flows!

From Sonny Kapoor: Everything will be alright in the end, and if it is not alright, it is not the end. Staying motivated is Step #5 in the job search. Sometimes people get so frustrated and fearful of the actual outcome that they allow that fear to stop them. Caroline wrote an exceptional chapter in a book entitled “How the Fierce Handle Fear” where she has learned to actually harness the power of fear.

Evelyn: Nothing here has worked out quite as I expected. Muriel: Most things don’t. But sometimes what happens instead is the good stuff.
I recently spoke to a senior military official who is helping his staff transition to civilian life. He said that two of his men took jobs that paid about $15 per hour. They weren’t happy about it, but it was better than doing nothing. They were so good at what they did, they were quickly promoted and are both now making over $100,000. Take a chance even when it wasn’t what you expected.

From Evelyn Greenslade: It’s true that the person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing. All we know about the future is that it will be different. But perhaps what we fear is that it will be the same. So we must celebrate the changes. This was my favorite quote because risks do bring rewards. Optimism attracts opportunity. Offer to volunteer at a quality organization and perhaps you will be hired in the end – this happened to more than five of my past clients. College grads finding it hard to find work may consider administrative positions, because people do get promoted to higher ranks.

From Jean Ainslie: If I wanted your opinion, I would give it to you. Do not surround yourself with negative, bitter, horrible people. They will bring you down and during a job search, no one can afford to be down or anxiety ridden! This was so negative I almost didn’t even include it here … but it’s a good thing to think about!

A short-term assignment offers great advantages for landing something long-term: you get a foot in the door to show what you can do; you learn about the organization to better position yourself for other opportunities; you experience the culture firsthand and make deeper connections. Moving from short-term to permanent won’t happen on its own, even if you do a great job, offer great value, and foster great relationships. You need to focus on converting to full-time. Here’s how.

Determine if there is need and desire for a permanent hire. Sure, the company wants to get the work done. But do they need a permanent hire to do this? Find out whether the work you are doing will recur. Confirm that the role is substantive and steady enough to merit a single person dedicated to it (if the role varies, it may be better to hire a series of different temps). Only when you are sure there’s a business advantage to a permanent hire should you lobby for the job. If you can’t make a business case, it’s better to do a great job in the temporary role and look for opportunities elsewhere in the company. Your effectiveness as a temp still counts: Your good performance in one area makes you a known quantity, reducing the hiring risk to the company.

Read two more tips in my latest post for Work Reimagined: Turn A Temporary Gig To A Permanent Job.

SparkHire asks: Once job seekers do hone in on the basics, what do you think they can do to go above and beyond to put themselves out there, and stand out from the competition?

Moni asks: How do I find an appropriate internship and turn this internship to a full-time position?

Tony asks: What specifically am I looking for in a job? How do I get through to an interview and distinguish myself? And finally, what am I doing wrong with previous interviews?

Colleen asks: How can I make the transition to become a college professor given my unique circumstances?

Gary asks: What do you do when the interviewers are taunting or laughing at your responses?