jobs-to-be-done

---
name: jobs-to-be-done
description: Use when analyzing customer discovery, churn, product-market fit, switching behavior, or the "job" customers hire a product to do, including competitive and pricing framing.
category: Product & Growth
version: 1.0.0
tools: []
---

# Jobs to Be Done Framework

Customers don't buy products — they "hire" them to do a specific job in their lives. Use this framework to discover what customers truly need by analyzing the job they hire a product to do.

## Core Principle

**Job to Be Done** = the progress a customer wants to make in specific circumstances.

Key elements of the definition:
- **Progress** (not goal, not solution) — the customer wants to move from the current state to a better one
- **Circumstances** — context determines the job, not customer attributes (demographics are useless)
- **Hiring/Firing** — the customer actively chooses a product for the "job"

## Scoring

**Goal: 10/10.** Score 1 point per satisfied row in the Quick Diagnostic (7 rows) plus up to 3 points for depth: +1 if all three job dimensions are evidenced, +1 if the job statement avoids any product/solution name, +1 if competition includes non-consumption. Bands: **9-10** = job stated without the product, all four forces mapped, three dimensions evidenced, non-obvious competition and Little Hire tracked; **5-6** = job named but one or two diagnostic rows fail (usually missing forces or emotional/social dimensions); **≤3** = product-first framing, demographic segmentation, or Pull-only thinking. Always state the current score and the specific diagnostic rows to fix.

## Three Dimensions of Every Job

Every job has three inseparable dimensions — omitting any means failure:

| Dimension | Question | Example (milkshake) |
|-----------|----------|---------------------|
| **Functional** | What does the customer need to do? | Occupy myself during a boring commute |
| **Emotional** | How do they want to feel? | Have a small treat for myself |
| **Social** | How do they want to be perceived? | As a sensible parent (not buying donuts) |

## Framework

### 1. The Job Statement

A job statement captures the progress a customer seeks in a specific circumstance, structured to separate context, desired progress, and expected outcome. Jobs are stable while solutions churn, so anchoring on the job protects a roadmap from chasing features that the next technology shift makes irrelevant.

**Key insights:**
- Format: "When [circumstances], I want to [progress], so I can [outcome]"
- Circumstances matter more than demographics — the same person has different jobs in different situations
- A well-written job statement never mentions your product or any specific solution

**Applications:** Define the job before brainstorming features ("When I'm commuting alone, I want something to occupy me and satisfy hunger, so I'm not hungry until lunch"). Evaluate whether a feature serves the core job before prioritizing it. Lead positioning and messaging with circumstance and progress, not product specs — "When you're [circumstance], you need [progress] — that's exactly what [product] does."

### 2. Forces of Progress (Push, Pull, Anxiety, Habit)

The decision to "hire" a new product results from four forces: Push (frustration with the current situation), Pull (attraction of the new solution), Anxiety (fear of the new), and Habit (comfort with the current behavior). Change happens only when **Push + Pull > Habit + Anxiety**. Most innovation efforts only increase Pull while ignoring the anti-change forces — which is why great products still fail to gain adoption.

**Key insights:**
- Push: "this annoys me"; Pull: "I want this"; Habit: "I've always done it this way"; Anxiety: "what if it doesn't work?"
- Reducing anxiety and habit is often more effective than increasing push and pull

**Applications:** Reduce anxiety in onboarding with trials, guarantees, and social proof ("no lock-in, cancel anytime, your data is always yours"). Defeat habit in switching campaigns with effortless migration (one-click import). Awaken push in passive seekers by naming the frustration in content marketing.

### 3. The Big Hire & Little Hire

Two distinct decision moments: the Big Hire (purchase/signup, happens once) and the Little Hire (decision to use in the moment, happens repeatedly). Winning the Big Hire does not guarantee the Little Hire — many products win the sale but lose the customer because they optimize only the purchase decision. Retention problems are almost always Little Hire failures: purchased but never used.

**Key insights:**
- Big Hire is driven by marketing, onboarding, and first impressions; Little Hire by product quality, UX, and ongoing value
- Big Hire anxiety is purchase risk; Little Hire anxiety is effort and learning curve
- Declining usage frequency (a Little Hire signal) predicts churn before cancellation does

**Applications:** Track "first use after signup" and "weekly active usage" separately from signup conversion. Optimize repeated usage, not just first impressions. Monitor Little Hire signals to predict churn.

### 4. Competitive Landscape (Non-Obvious Competition)

True competition is everything a customer can "hire" for the same job, often from completely different categories — competitors are defined by the job, not by industry classification. Category-based analysis creates blind spots: a milkshake competes with bananas, bagels, and podcasts; a streaming app competes with sleep and family conversation. Mapping the full landscape around the job reveals threats and opportunities traditional analysis misses.

**Key insights:**
- Non-consumption (doing nothing) is often the biggest competitor
- Workarounds and compensating behaviors reveal unserved jobs — people hack, combine, and improvise
- Integrate where performance is "not good enough" for the job; modularize where it's "good enough"
- The best positioning answers "what job are we the best hire for?", not "how do we compare to similar products?"

**Applications:** Map all hires for the job across categories (a PM tool competes with spreadsheets, sticky notes, email, and memory). Position against the real alternative — "doing it manually" — not a named competitor. Price against the job's value: if the job saves 10 hours/week, price against that time, not similar SaaS.

### 5. Customer Discovery Interviews

Don't ask customers "what do you need" — they don't know and will rationalize decisions after the fact. Instead, reconstruct the purchase timeline (first thought, search, purchase, usage) to uncover the real job. Walking backward through concrete events reveals the true circumstances, forces, and tradeoffs that drove behavior.

**Key insights:**
- First thought: "When did you first look for a solution? What was happening in your life? What frustrated you?"
- Search: "What alternatives did you consider? What eliminated options? Who did you talk to?"
- Purchase: "Where were you? What ultimately convinced you? What were you afraid of?"
- Usage: "Is it doing what you expected? What surprised you? What's still missing?"
- Signals of undiscovered jobs: workarounds, non-consumption, compensating behaviors, negative emotions toward current solutions
- Ask only about past events, never hypotheticals ("would you...") — naming your solution leads the subject and produces confirmation, not discovery

**Applications:** Interview recent switchers to reconstruct what pushed them away and pulled them in. Interview churned customers on their timeline to distinguish a Big Hire failure (wrong expectations) from a Little Hire failure (poor daily experience). Interview customers using workarounds — spreadsheets alongside your product reveal an unmet job dimension. Use exact customer language from interviews in marketing copy — "We heard you say [verbatim quote] — so we built [feature]."

### 6. Designing for the Job

Build the entire experience — features, metrics, organization — around helping the customer accomplish their job, not around internal capabilities or feature parity. When every decision answers "will this help the customer better accomplish their job?", teams avoid feature bloat and build coherent products; if you can't answer it, you don't understand the job yet.

**Key insights:**
- Replace customer satisfaction metrics with "did the job get done?"
- Replace NPS with "reasons for hiring and firing"; replace feature usage with "progress on the job"
- Organize teams and processes around jobs, not internal capabilities or product components

**Applications:** Measure job completion ("time from problem to resolution," not "features used per session"). Prioritize roadmap items across job dimensions — a functional fix that ignores the emotional dimension may not move the needle. Structure teams around jobs, not internal capabilities.

## Common Mistakes

| Mistake | Why It Fails | Fix |
|---------|-------------|-----|
| Defining jobs narrowly around your product | Misses the real competitive landscape | Define the job from the customer's perspective, never mentioning your product |
| Confusing jobs with goals or tasks | Goals too abstract ("be healthy"), tasks too specific ("click button") | Jobs = progress in specific circumstances |
| Only increasing Pull | Great products fail when switching costs and fear stay high | Map all four forces; design interventions for Anxiety and Habit |
| Winning the Big Hire, ignoring the Little Hire | High acquisition, high churn — purchased but never used | Track and optimize repeated usage separately from purchase |
| Defining competition by category | Blind spots from adjacent categories and non-consumption | Map every alternative hire for the job, including doing nothing |

## Quick Diagnostic

| Question | If No | Action |
|----------|-------|--------|
| Can you state the job in one sentence without mentioning your product? | Product-focused, not job-focused | Write: "When [circumstances], I want to [progress], so I can [outcome]" |
| Have you mapped all four forces? | Over-investing in Pull, ignoring barriers | Design specific interventions for Anxiety and Habit |
| Do you know the emotional and social dimensions? | May win functionally but lose on experience | Run discovery interviews on feelings and social context |