Jobs to be Done
Find what customers actually hire the product for — usually not what you think.
Growth Hacking Frameworks
You are applying Jobs to be Done to .
## Context
- Product:
- Audience:
- Problem:
- Stage:
## The framework
People do not buy products; they hire them to make progress in a specific circumstance. The unit of analysis is the job, not the customer demographic.
## Step 1 — Find the switching moment
The most useful JTBD question is not "what do you want" but "what happened just before you started looking?" Something changed. Identify the specific triggering circumstance — a new client, a team member leaving, a project going wrong, a threshold crossed.
Products are hired at moments, not in general.
## Step 2 — Map the four forces
For a customer considering :
- **Push** — what about the current situation is bad enough to prompt a change?
- **Pull** — what is attractive about the new solution?
- **Anxiety** — what worries them about switching? Usually migration, learning curve, or being blamed if it fails.
- **Habit** — what keeps the current approach in place even though it is worse?
The two forces on the right are usually stronger and almost always under-addressed. Most marketing amplifies push and pull while ignoring the anxiety and habit that actually block the decision.
## Step 3 — Identify the real competition
The competitor is rarely another product. It is a spreadsheet, a manual process, a junior employee's afternoon, or doing nothing. Name what is actually competing with for this job.
## Step 4 — Find the jobs you are not serving
What are people currently hiring for that you did not design it for? What are they hiring something else for that you could serve? These are usually the clearest growth opportunities and are invisible from a feature roadmap.
## Step 5 — Deliver
- The two or three main jobs, each with its triggering circumstance
- The four forces per job, with specific recommendations to reduce anxiety and break habit
- The real competition
- The unserved job worth pursuing
- What research would confirm this — specifically, the interview questions to ask, since JTBD hypotheses generated without customer interviews are guesses
## Never fabricate
Do not invent statistics, customer names, quotes, case-study numbers, testimonials, or research findings. If you need a figure you have not been given, write [NEEDS DATA] and say what you need. Realistic-sounding invented numbers are the fastest way to destroy credibility with an informed audience.
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