How to find work you love | Bob Moesta (Jobs-to-be-Done co-creator, author of "Job Moves”)
Bob Mesta, co-creator of Jobs To Be Done and CEO of The Rewired Group, discusses his new book "Job Moves." He shares a tactical guide for employees to find jobs they love and for companies to hire and retain top talent by understanding job experiences over features.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Topic Outline
Introduction to Bob Moesta and the 'Job Moves' book
Distinction between job features and job experiences
The four quests that drive career changes
Identifying energy drivers and energy drains
Prototyping potential jobs through informational interviews
Understanding trade-offs and the imperfection of jobs
The concept and benefits of a 'jobcation'
Navigating job applications and breaking through filters
Crafting your compelling career story
Leveraging strengths and understanding weaknesses
Applying the framework to hiring and job descriptions
Self-awareness for aspiring founders
Using the framework for personal alignment and managing overwhelm
6 Key Concepts
Job Features vs. Experiences
Job features, like salary and title, are static attributes, whereas job experiences are the dynamic aspects that truly keep someone at a job and drive progress. Understanding the experiences you seek, rather than just features, is crucial for long-term career satisfaction.
Four Quests of Career Change
These are four primary motivations or contexts that drive people to switch jobs: 'Get Out' (current job is draining), 'Take the Next Step' (seeking career growth), 'Regain Control' (losing work-life balance), and 'Realign' (drifted from core strengths/passions). Identifying your current quest helps define your next career move.
Energy Drivers & Drains
Energy drivers are specific situations, tasks, or interactions that invigorate a person, making work feel less like work. Conversely, energy drains are activities that deplete one's energy, often stemming from tasks one dislikes or is not good at. Identifying these helps in designing a more fulfilling career path.
Prototyping Jobs
An approach to career exploration where individuals identify potential job roles or industries that align with their energy drivers and strengths. They then conduct informational interviews with people in those roles to understand the actual day-to-day experiences before formally applying.
Jobcation
A temporary job that is less demanding and can be done 'with one hand tied behind your back,' allowing an individual to rest, recover, and reset their mind and body. This is particularly useful after a highly stressful or demanding role, providing space to reflect before the next big career step.
Career Story Template
A structured narrative framework, also known as Pixar’s Story Structure, used to articulate one's career journey, motivations, and aspirations in a concise and engaging way. It helps individuals distill their experiences into a compelling story for interviews or self-reflection.
8 Questions Answered
People leave jobs when they stop making progress in their career, often driven by a combination of 'pushes' (negative experiences like boredom or disrespect) and 'pulls' (desires for specific outcomes like growth or control).
Reflect on specific moments or projects throughout your career (even back to college or high school) where you felt excited and energized, or conversely, where you felt drained. Dissect the context of these moments to understand the underlying causes.
First, understand your 'quest' (e.g., get out, next step, regain control, realign). Then, identify your energy drivers and drains, and what you're good at. Use this self-knowledge to 'prototype' potential jobs by conducting informational interviews with people in those roles to see if they truly match your desired experiences.
While salary and title (job features) can be important, it's the job experiences that ultimately keep you satisfied and making progress. Money often serves as a surrogate for deeper needs like respect or security, so understanding *why* you want more money is crucial.
Focus on networking and finding real jobs that don't primarily come through automated filters. If you must use them, consider hiring a resume writer who understands how to 'hack the system' by tailoring your resume with keywords and phrasing to pass through AI filters.
Use a structured narrative template (like Pixar's Story Structure: 'Once upon a time...', 'Every day...', 'Then one day...', etc.) to concisely articulate your core skills, motivations for change, and career journey, intriguing the interviewer to ask more questions.
Shift from trying to find a person to fit a rigid job description to reshaping the job to fit the person. Write job descriptions that focus on the *experiences* people will have and the progress they can make, rather than just a list of features or generic requirements like 'five years experience.'
A jobcation is a less demanding job taken to rest, recover, and reset your mind and body, especially after a highly stressful period (e.g., exiting a startup). It allows you to rebuild relationships, reflect, and rediscover who you are before committing to your next big career move.
33 Actionable Insights
1. Prioritize Job Experiences
When evaluating job opportunities, prioritize the experiences a role offers over static features like salary or title, as experiences are what truly drive satisfaction and retention.
2. Map Energy Drivers & Drains
Reflect on your past career and educational experiences to identify specific moments, projects, or interactions that either gave you energy (drivers) or drained your energy, then dissect the underlying context of these experiences.
3. Identify Your Career Quest
Determine which of the four career ‘quests’ you are on (Get Out, Take the Next Step, Regain Control, Realign) to understand the underlying motivations for your job search and guide your next move.
4. Make Conscious Trade-offs
Accept that no job is perfect and requires trade-offs; consciously identify what you are willing to give up (e.g., salary for learning) to gain what truly matters to you in a role.
5. Own Your Career Path
Understand that navigating your career path is your personal responsibility, as HR’s primary role is often risk management and filling positions, not individual career guidance.
6. Prototype Diverse Jobs
After distilling your skills and energy drivers, prototype a wide range of potential job positions across different industries, recognizing that your core strengths are transferable to many roles.
7. Conduct Informational Interviews
Actively seek out and conduct informational interviews with people currently or formerly in roles you’re considering; this provides practical insights into the job and valuable practice for future interviews.
8. Craft Your Career Story
Develop a concise, compelling personal career story using the Pixar template (Once upon a time…, Every day…, Then one day…, Because of that…, Until finally…, And ever since that day…) to articulate your journey, skills, and future aspirations.
9. Leverage Superpowers, Not Weaknesses
Instead of trying to ‘fix’ your weaknesses, focus on leveraging your unique strengths and ‘superpowers,’ understanding that attempting to normalize weaknesses can diminish your core abilities.
10. Take a Jobcation
If you are burnt out or exhausted, seek a ‘jobcation’—a less demanding job that allows you to rest, recover, and reset your mind and body before pursuing your next big move.
11. Reset After Startup
After leaving a startup, commit to taking a significant period (e.g., a year) to reset your mind and body, allowing yourself to become comfortable doing nothing to rediscover your true identity and purpose.
12. Aim for Next-Next Job
If your quest is to ‘Take the Next Step,’ redefine what a significant step means for you, focusing on the ’next-next job’ to ensure your current move aligns with your long-term career roadmap.
13. Simplify & Realign Strengths
If your quest is to ‘Regain Control,’ focus on simplifying your job and realigning your responsibilities to primarily leverage what you are truly good at and enjoy doing.
14. Prioritize Time Control
If your quest is to ‘Realign,’ prioritize finding a role that offers greater control over your time and allows for a better work-life balance, especially as your personal context changes.
15. Hire a Resume Writer
To navigate automated application filters and increase visibility, hire a professional resume writer (e.g., found on LinkedIn) who understands how to craft resumes that pass through these systems effectively.
16. Fit Job to Person
As an employer, instead of trying to find a person to fit a rigid job description, actively seek to redesign the job to fit the unique strengths and energy drivers of a good candidate.
17. Improve Job Descriptions
As an employer, improve job descriptions by focusing on experiences and outcomes rather than just features, and build a hiring process that uncovers candidates’ energy drivers and drains.
18. Be Specific in Requirements
When writing job descriptions, avoid vague requirements like ‘five years experience’; instead, be highly specific about the outcomes and experiences a candidate will deliver, rather than just listing features or skills.
19. Interview with Pushes/Pulls
As a hiring manager, use the ‘pushes and pulls’ framework to structure interview questions, asking candidates why they left their previous job and what they are truly seeking in their next role.
20. Monthly Quest Check-in
Utilize the ‘Job Moves’ quest test (available on jobmoves.com) monthly to assess your current career quest, identify misalignments, and stay on track with your goals and energy.
21. Delegate Misaligning Tasks
Actively delegate tasks that pull you out of alignment or drain your energy, recognizing that doing so can significantly boost your motivation and overall effectiveness.
22. Founder Self-Awareness
As an aspiring founder, cultivate deep self-awareness of your strengths, weaknesses, energy drivers, and drains to effectively shape your founder role and build a complementary team around you.
23. Focus on Productivity
As a founder, consciously differentiate between mere activity and true productivity to avoid wasting effort on tasks that don’t contribute to meaningful progress and cause unnecessary stress.
24. Unpack Your Money Motives
When seeking higher pay, deeply understand the underlying reasons (e.g., respect, financial security, feeling behind) rather than just the desire for more money itself.
25. Identify Bottom 5 Weaknesses
Utilize StrengthsFinder not just for your top strengths, but critically identify your bottom five weaknesses, as these often reveal the root causes of your energy drains.
26. Daily Energy Reflection
At the end of each day, reflect on where you gained energy and where your energy was drained to better articulate your preferences and needs in a job.
27. Gamify Energy Drains
For tasks that drain your energy, wrap a process around them or gamify them to make them more manageable and help you get through them effectively.
28. Prioritize Networking
Focus on networking and directly communicating your aspirations to people rather than relying solely on mass resume applications, as most ‘real’ job opportunities don’t come through automated filters.
29. Beware Overpaying’s Impact
As an employer, be mindful that overpaying can sometimes lead to employees becoming overly conservative and less innovative due to fear of losing their compensation, rather than doing what they should.
30. Find Superpowers in Weakness
Recognize that perceived disabilities or weaknesses can often foster unique ‘super abilities’; identify these strengths and actively leverage them in your career and life.
31. Monitor Career Growth for Signals
Actively monitor your career progress, as a halt in growth often signals the right time to seek a new job.
32. No Growth Path Means Move On
Consider it a significant ‘push’ to seek a new job if you don’t aspire to your boss’s role and cannot identify a clear next step for growth within your current company.
33. Practice Informational Interviews First
Leverage the practice gained from 10-15 informational interviews with strangers to significantly boost your comfort and confidence during formal job interviews.
7 Key Quotes
The moment you stop making progress in your career is the moment you start looking for another job.
Bob Moesta
Ultimately most of them end up with a job that's worse than the one they were at, but they don't know how to find it. They don't know themselves well enough.
Bob Moesta
Money is a surrogate for respect or I've got bills to pay or I'm falling behind.
Bob Moesta
Most people spend 95% of their time doing the work that sucks their energy so they get the 5% of the joy of the work they do.
Bob Moesta
No job is perfect and ultimately people are looking for the thing that checks all the boxes and you start to realize like nothing checks all the boxes.
Bob Moesta
I am a big proponent that when you're in a startup it changes who you are and the moment that you get out of that environment you need to go you need to take the time to reset your your mind and your body back to where who you really are.
Bob Moesta
Your weaknesses actually create your super abilities and knowing what they are is so important.
Bob Moesta
2 Protocols
Finding a Job You Love (Bob Moesta's 9-Step Process)
Bob Moesta- Understand Your Quest: Identify which of the four quests (Get Out, Take the Next Step, Regain Control, Realign) is driving your career change.
- Identify Energy Drivers & Drains: Reflect on past career moments (even back to college/high school) where you gained or lost energy. Dissect the context to understand the underlying causes.
- Distill Skills & Requirements: Clearly articulate your skills, what gives you energy, and what drains you, to form 'design requirements' for your next job.
- Prototype Wide: Identify many different potential job positions or industries that could meet your requirements.
- Conduct Informational Interviews: Talk to people who have or had these prototyped jobs (e.g., find them on LinkedIn) to understand what the role is truly like and if it aligns with your desired experiences.
- Narrow Down & Make Trade-offs: Based on prototyping, narrow down to one area. Acknowledge that no job is perfect and be willing to make trade-offs, understanding what you're willing to give up to get what you want.
- Craft Your Career Story: Develop a concise, intriguing narrative of your career journey using a template (e.g., Pixar's Story Structure) to articulate who you are, what you want, and why.
- Tailor Resume & Interview: Write a resume that focuses on what you *can do* and the work you *want to do*, not just where you've been. Use your practiced interview skills and self-awareness to be transparent about your strengths and weaknesses.
- Continuously Realign: Regularly assess your current situation using the framework (e.g., a monthly test) to ensure you remain in alignment with your energy drivers and career goals, delegating or eliminating tasks that pull you out of alignment.
Crafting Your Career Story (Pixar's Story Structure)
Bob Moesta- Once upon a time blank: Describe your core skills or initial state.
- Every day blank: Describe your daily routine or ongoing curiosity/struggle.
- Then one day blank: Describe a pivotal realization or change.
- Because of that blank: Describe the immediate consequence of that realization.
- Because of that blank: Describe the further consequence or journey.
- Until finally blank: Describe the ultimate outcome or method developed.
- And ever since that day blank: Describe your current purpose or ongoing passion.