Job Moves
Book

Job Moves

9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career

Ethan Bernstein, Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta
HarperBusiness, 2024
Buy the book

Read Offline or Discuss

Amazon Kindle  Discuss

Editorial Rating

9

getAbstract Rating

  • Applicable
  • Overview
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Job-switching is never easy; but career-change researchers Bob Moesta, Ethan Bernstein, and Michael B. Horn’s fresh approach to job transitions can help smooth your path. Follow their step-by-step process to identify the work you find motivating, craft a compelling career story, align your aspirations with opportunities, and avoid common career pitfalls. Whether you seek to take the next step in your current growth trajectory, regain alignment by choosing a new role, gain control of how you do your work, or do a complete reset, the authors equip you with the tools to take control of your professional future.

Summary

Approach career change like a customer choosing which product to purchase.

Approximately one billion people change jobs every year. But change is not always synonymous with progress — the underlying thing most people seek when switching jobs. Whether they realize it or not, people who make career changes that leave them more satisfied than before the switch embrace a mindset akin to Bob Moesta and Clayton Christensen’s Jobs to Be Done theory surrounding consumer purchasing decisions: Consumers “hire” products that help them make progress on specific goals — purchasing a quarter-inch drill to make quarter-inch holes, for example. Likewise, successful job changers “hire” employers that enable the kind of progress they want to make in their careers. They identify these employers by understanding what progress means to them, the sorts of jobs that will support that progress, and the trade-offs involved in pursuing those roles. The following nine steps will take you through this process, step by step:

Step 1: Consider why you want to look for a new job.

A predictable job-switching timeline typically begins with vague dissatisfaction about your current job or casual...

About the Authors

Ethan Bernstein is the Edward W. Conard Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at the Harvard Business School. Michael B. Horn is the co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute and teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Bob Moesta is the president and founder of the Re-Wired Group and adjunct lecturer at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern.

Comment on this summary