Jobs to Be Done Library
What customers in each industry are actually trying to get done, where they get stuck, what they hire to do it, and what is still missing.
Each Set is one customer situation: who they are, where they stand, what they are trying to get done. Inside a Set are the Jobs, and around each Job are four perspectives, Pains, Desired Outcomes, Existing Solutions and Opportunity Gaps.
AI & Technology
- Owner of a 5–50 person business with no technical teamOpen
Small Businesses Putting AI to Real Work
The Jobs of someone pushed to "use AI" with no way to tell where it is worth using, and where the hard part is not the tool but describing the work as it stands.
5 Jobs - A professional using an AI assistant for their own work
Professionals Using AI Every Day
The Jobs of someone who already uses AI daily and must now decide how far to trust it, with nobody setting the rules.
5 Jobs - Someone whose case was decided by a system
People Judged by an Automated System
The Jobs of someone receiving a decision with no person behind it to explain.
5 Jobs - A parent whose child uses AI for schoolwork
Parents Whose Children Use AI
The Jobs of someone separating a tool that helps from one that does it instead.
5 Jobs - Someone buying something labelled intelligent
Buyers of Products Advertised as AI
The Jobs of someone separating a real capability from a word used to sell.
5 Jobs - Someone in a trade being automated
People Worried About Being Replaced
The Jobs of someone deciding about their livelihood amid speculation.
5 Jobs - Someone asking an AI about their own life
People Using AI for Personal Matters
The Jobs of someone sharing private matters with something whose retention they do not know.
5 Jobs - Someone reading machine-generated content
People Receiving Machine-Written Information
The Jobs of someone judging reliability without knowing who wrote it.
5 Jobs - An older person facing service without humans
Older People Facing Automated Services
The Jobs of someone moved onto a form of service they did not choose.
5 Jobs - Someone whose likeness or voice was faked
People Impersonated or Faked
The Jobs of someone having to prove a negative about themselves.
5 Jobs
Beauty
- Someone getting their hair cut or done every few monthsOpen
People Trying to Get the Haircut They Wanted
The Jobs of someone sitting in the chair who must describe in words a thing they can only picture, to a person they do not know.
5 Jobs - Someone just starting to buy cosmetics
First-Time Cosmetics Buyers
The Jobs of someone choosing among hundreds of products with no way to know which suits them.
5 Jobs - Someone noticing their hair thinning
People Worried About Hair Loss
The Jobs of someone facing something gradual, expensive to treat and awkward to ask about.
5 Jobs - Someone getting nails done every few weeks
Regular Nail Clients
The Jobs of someone inside a cycle with no natural end.
5 Jobs - A man using grooming and beauty services
Men Using Beauty Services
The Jobs of someone using a service where everything around it addresses somebody else.
5 Jobs - Someone using a spa to unwind
People Going to a Spa to Rest
The Jobs of someone paying to switch off and being sold to throughout.
5 Jobs - Someone preparing their appearance for an interview
People Preparing for an Interview
The Jobs of someone who must look right against a standard nobody has stated.
5 Jobs - Someone who reacts easily to products
People With Sensitive Skin
The Jobs of someone for whom a wrong choice shows on their face for days.
5 Jobs - Someone buying for another person
People Buying Cosmetics as Gifts
The Jobs of someone choosing something deeply personal on another person behalf.
5 Jobs - Someone wanting to change how they look
People Wanting a Major Change
The Jobs of someone wanting a large change with no way to see the result first.
5 Jobs
Executive
- Team leads and staff turning a leadership decision into daily workOpen
People Executing a Strategy They Did Not Set
The Jobs of whoever stands at the receiving end of executive decisions, the person who must make them real and the first to know when they cannot be.
5 Jobs - Someone between leadership and the doers
Middle Managers
The Jobs of someone relaying down and defending up without authority over either.
5 Jobs - An employee of a company that changed hands
People Inside an Acquired Company
The Jobs of someone waiting to learn what a new owner decides about their work.
5 Jobs - Someone whose senior leader has just changed
People Working Under a New Leader
The Jobs of someone rebuilding standing they already had, with a person who just arrived.
5 Jobs - Someone executing a decision to cut
People Carrying Out Cuts
The Jobs of someone delivering a decision they disagree with and may not say so.
5 Jobs - Someone whose work is cut into three-month cycles
People Working to Quarterly Goals
The Jobs of someone doing long work inside a system that only measures three months at a time.
5 Jobs - Someone inside an organisation-wide change programme
People Inside a Large Transformation
The Jobs of someone keeping everything running while replacing the thing that runs it.
5 Jobs - Someone presenting work to leadership
People Reporting Upward
The Jobs of someone compressing a quarter into one page without falsifying it.
5 Jobs - Someone where headcount doubles yearly
People in a Fast-Growing Organisation
The Jobs of someone working in an organisation that changes shape faster than they can learn it.
5 Jobs - Someone deciding in the moment with a customer
Frontline Decision Makers
The Jobs of someone handling a situation the rules did not anticipate.
5 Jobs
Commerce
- Someone buying most of their things onlineOpen
People Who Shop Online Regularly
The Jobs of someone deciding entirely from photographs, descriptions and reviews, all three produced by the seller or by strangers.
5 Jobs - Someone buying an expensive item for the first time
First-Time Buyers of Something Expensive
The Jobs of someone judging a large purchase having never made one.
5 Jobs - Someone selling on what they no longer use
People Reselling Their Own Things
The Jobs of someone selling one item to a stranger with no protections at all.
5 Jobs - Someone purchasing on behalf of a company
People Buying for a Business
The Jobs of someone buying by the rules while the actual user needs something else.
5 Jobs - Someone buying together with others
Group Buyers
The Jobs of whoever fronts a group purchase and carries all its risk.
5 Jobs - Someone ordering from another country
People Buying From Abroad
The Jobs of someone paying up front for goods that may be held somewhere beyond their reach.
5 Jobs - Someone buying household essentials regularly
People Doing the Monthly Shop
The Jobs of someone doing the same task monthly that costs the same time every month.
5 Jobs - Someone buying used items
Buyers of Second-Hand Goods
The Jobs of someone buying from an individual with no receipt, no warranty and no recourse.
5 Jobs - Someone wanting to know how goods were made
Buyers Who Care Where Things Come From
The Jobs of someone wanting to buy responsibly where every claim is made by the seller.
5 Jobs - Someone with a problem on an order
People Making a Complaint or Return
The Jobs of someone spending their own time to recover what should have been right to begin with.
5 Jobs
Customer Success
- Whoever inside the organisation must roll out what was boughtOpen
People Who Bought It and Must Make It Work
The Jobs of whoever must turn a contract into something that actually runs, inside an organisation where nobody was given time for it.
5 Jobs - An employee made to use what the organisation bought
End Users Handed a New System
The Jobs of someone changing how they work because of a decision they had no part in.
5 Jobs - A small organisation buying from a large provider
Small Customers of Large Providers
The Jobs of someone too small for anyone to answer and too entangled to leave easily.
5 Jobs - Someone using a system with a third party in between
Users of a Partner-Managed System
The Jobs of someone handling a problem where each party points at the other.
5 Jobs - Someone taking over a system already running
People Inheriting a System
The Jobs of someone accountable for choices they did not make and nobody recorded.
5 Jobs - A customer of a company that changed hands
Customers When a Provider Is Acquired
The Jobs of someone living through changes they were not consulted on and cannot predict.
5 Jobs - An employee buying a tool for their own work
People Buying a Tool Themselves at Work
The Jobs of someone solving their own problem with something the organisation does not know exists.
5 Jobs - Someone making several systems talk
People Connecting Several Systems
The Jobs of someone working in exactly the gap no provider will own.
5 Jobs - Someone reviewing a long-running system
People Reassessing an Old System
The Jobs of someone separating a choice that still holds from a habit that merely persists.
5 Jobs - Someone who must teach their team a system
People Training Their Own Team
The Jobs of someone translating generic material into their own team’s way of working.
5 Jobs
Drink
- Someone buying a cup before work, nearly every dayOpen
People Who Drink Coffee Every Morning
The Jobs of someone buying the morning cup, where what they buy is neither only a drink nor only caffeine.
5 Jobs - Someone buying bubble tea several times a week
Regular Bubble Tea Drinkers
The Jobs of someone drinking something as sugary and caloric as a meal that nobody counts as a meal.
5 Jobs - Someone meeting friends over drinks
Friends Meeting at a Café
The Jobs of a group buying drinks to justify sitting together for hours.
5 Jobs - Someone at gatherings where alcohol is served
People Drinking at Social Occasions
The Jobs of someone balancing belonging against holding their own limit.
5 Jobs - Whoever is asked to order for everyone
People Ordering Drinks for a Group
The Jobs of someone bringing back ten different cups with nothing written down.
5 Jobs - Someone on a night shift or studying late
People Drinking to Stay Awake at Night
The Jobs of someone using caffeine to beat sleep and paying for it by day.
5 Jobs - A parent choosing drinks for a child
People Buying Drinks for Children
The Jobs of someone weighing what the child wants against what they know is better.
5 Jobs - Someone wanting to understand what they drink
People Learning About Coffee
The Jobs of someone wanting to tell real quality apart in a field thick with vocabulary.
5 Jobs - Someone buying to carry on the way
Daily Takeaway Drink Buyers
The Jobs of someone keeping the convenience without discomfort at what they throw away daily.
5 Jobs - Whoever handles drinks for a gathering
People Hosting an Event With Drinks
The Jobs of someone buying enough for a crowd whose size nobody knows.
5 Jobs
Education
- Parents of school-age childrenOpen
Parents Helping Children Learn
The Jobs parents are trying to accomplish when they help their children learn, and why one more tutoring class is rarely the answer.
5 Jobs - Someone a few years into work, moving to a different field
Working Adults Changing Careers
The Jobs of someone learning a new trade while still paying rent, where the scarce thing is not courses but proof of being good enough.
5 Jobs - A final-year student or recent graduate
Students Choosing a First Job
The Jobs of someone deciding about something they have never experienced, where all information comes from people already inside.
5 Jobs - A working adult learning a language outside work hours
Adults Learning a Language
The Jobs of someone who knows what they need and cannot hold the habit, where the scarce thing is not material but occasions to use it for real.
5 Jobs - The learning lead at a 50–500 person company
Companies Training Their Own People
The Jobs of someone who must prove learning changed the work, while what is measurable is how many people sat in the room.
5 Jobs - Someone self-teaching a skill from free material and online courses
People Teaching Themselves Online
The Jobs of someone with every resource in the world, missing exactly three things: an order, feedback, and a reason to show up on a Tuesday night.
5 Jobs - A final-year student and family preparing to study overseas
Students Preparing to Study Abroad
The Jobs of a family betting years of income on a place nobody has seen, where every advisory source is paid commission by the other side.
5 Jobs - Someone learning a specific trade to work
Vocational Students
The Jobs of someone choosing a trade from a description rather than from experience.
5 Jobs - Someone preparing for a professional certificate
People Studying for a Certificate
The Jobs of someone learning something the exam measures differently from the work.
5 Jobs - A parent choosing a school
Parents Choosing a School
The Jobs of someone judging a place whose result appears only after years.
5 Jobs
Finance
- Whoever manages the income, spending and money decisions at homeOpen
The Person Who Handles the Household Money
The Jobs of someone deciding about borrowing, saving and risk, where everyone willing to advise is selling something.
5 Jobs - Someone with their first income
Young People Starting Work
The Jobs of someone holding their own money for the first time with nobody having taught them what to do with it.
5 Jobs - Someone about to stop working
People Approaching Retirement
The Jobs of someone making a fixed sum last for a period nobody can measure.
5 Jobs - Someone whose income varies month to month
Freelancers With Uneven Income
The Jobs of someone planning against a number that is never the same twice.
5 Jobs - Someone carrying several debts at once
People Repaying Debt
The Jobs of someone choosing which debt to pay first while every creditor is asking.
5 Jobs - Someone supporting relatives at a distance
People Sending Money Home
The Jobs of someone balancing their own life against an obligation to family elsewhere.
5 Jobs - Someone beginning to invest
First-Time Investors
The Jobs of someone putting money into something they do not yet understand, among people who gain when they do.
5 Jobs - A parent preparing for education costs
Parents Saving for a Child’s Education
The Jobs of someone accumulating a sum for a date that will not move.
5 Jobs - Someone who suddenly holds a large sum
People Receiving a Large Sum
The Jobs of someone deciding about a large sum just as their circumstances changed.
5 Jobs - Someone signing multi-year agreements
People Signing Long Financial Contracts
The Jobs of someone understanding a document written for lawyers in a thirty-minute meeting.
5 Jobs
Food
- A worker eating lunch near the office or ordering inOpen
Office Workers Eating Lunch Every Day
The Jobs of someone buying lunch, in a shop, through an app, or from a kitchen with no storefront, and deciding all over again each day.
5 Jobs - Whoever orders dinner for the household
Families Ordering Dinner In
The Jobs of someone choosing a dinner that suits everyone, in ten minutes, after a working day.
5 Jobs - Someone eating dinner alone, usually at home
People Eating Alone at Night
The Jobs of someone eating alone, where portions, delivery fees and even the feeling are designed for other people.
5 Jobs - Whoever ends up choosing the place
Friends Choosing Where to Meet
The Jobs of whoever must pick a place nobody objects to, under constraints nobody states.
5 Jobs - Whoever handles food for an important occasion
People Ordering for a Family Occasion
The Jobs of someone ordering a meal that cannot go wrong, for the people they care most about.
5 Jobs - Someone who must avoid certain ingredients
People Eating With Restrictions
The Jobs of someone who must trust another person’s description of what they are about to eat.
5 Jobs - Whoever orders meals for a workplace group
People Ordering for the Whole Office
The Jobs of someone ordering for dozens, absorbing every complaint and thanked for none of the successes.
5 Jobs - Someone buying prepared food instead of cooking
People Buying Ready Meals
The Jobs of someone wanting a decent meal without cooking, and without feeling they cut a corner.
5 Jobs - Someone eating where they do not know the streets
Visitors Finding Food Somewhere New
The Jobs of someone choosing where to eat in an unfamiliar place, from reviews by people they cannot judge.
5 Jobs - Someone needing meals to match a training goal
People Eating for Training
The Jobs of someone needing to know what is on the plate, where nobody sells food by those numbers.
5 Jobs
Founder
- Someone deciding to buy from a new and unknown companyOpen
The First Customers of a Company With Nothing Yet
The Jobs of the early buyer, the person carrying all the risk of an unproven company, and the condition of its existence.
5 Jobs - Someone taking a job at a company with nothing yet
People Joining a New Company
The Jobs of someone betting years of a career on an organisation that may not exist.
5 Jobs - Someone putting money into an unproven company
Small Investors in New Companies
The Jobs of someone handing money to a party they have no way to oversee.
5 Jobs - A large organisation partnering with a very small one
Partners Working With a Startup
The Jobs of someone joining a months-long process to a party that changes plans weekly.
5 Jobs - Someone acquiring a whole company
Buyers of a Small Company
The Jobs of someone paying for an organisation that may dissolve right after signing.
5 Jobs - Someone selling services to new companies
Suppliers to New Companies
The Jobs of someone serving customers with a very high rate of disappearance.
5 Jobs - Someone trying products before release
Early Product Testers
The Jobs of someone spending time to improve a product with nothing promised in return.
5 Jobs - Someone contracting for new companies
Contractors for New Companies
The Jobs of someone completing work for a party that may run out of money before paying.
5 Jobs - Someone advising new companies
Advisers to Founders
The Jobs of someone telling a hard truth to a person who needs optimism to continue.
5 Jobs - Someone deciding to stop what took years
People Deciding to Stop a Venture
The Jobs of someone separating persistence from refusal to accept.
5 Jobs
Health & Fitness
- A working adult who wants to train and has not kept it upOpen
People Who Want to Get Fitter and Have Not Started
The Jobs of someone who has started many times and stopped many times, not for want of information, but for the things nobody sells a solution to.
5 Jobs - Someone wanting to lose weight and keep it off
People Losing Weight for Good
The Jobs of someone who has lost weight several times and regained it every time.
5 Jobs - Someone caring for a family member
People Caring for a Sick Relative
The Jobs of someone doing a full-time job nobody calls a job.
5 Jobs - Someone with a long-running sleep problem
People Who Sleep Badly
The Jobs of someone told to relax, where not sleeping is itself what creates the tension.
5 Jobs - A parent monitoring a child’s health
Parents Worried About a Child’s Health
The Jobs of someone judging severity with no clinical training at all.
5 Jobs - Someone training toward a competition
People Training to Compete
The Jobs of someone who must peak on one exact day, neither earlier nor later.
5 Jobs - Someone giving up a harmful habit
People Quitting Smoking or Drinking
The Jobs of someone giving up a thing bound tightly to being with other people.
5 Jobs - Someone having an annual check-up
People Getting Regular Check-Ups
The Jobs of someone holding a results sheet with no idea which number matters.
5 Jobs - Someone starting or resuming in their forties or fifties
People Training in Middle Age
The Jobs of someone training the way they did ten years ago and not understanding why it stopped working.
5 Jobs - Someone living with a long-term illness
People Managing a Long-Term Condition
The Jobs of someone self-managing a lifelong condition between appointments months apart.
5 Jobs
Home & Interiors
- A homeowner hiring trades to renovate or fit outOpen
People Renovating for the First Time
The Jobs of someone spending a large sum on work they have no expertise to judge, from people they do not know.
5 Jobs - Someone renting as their main home
Long-Term Renters
The Jobs of someone wanting a real home inside a house belonging to somebody else.
5 Jobs - Someone buying their first home
First-Time Home Buyers
The Jobs of someone assessing a major asset they were allowed to view for thirty minutes.
5 Jobs - Someone living in a multi-household building
Apartment Residents
The Jobs of someone whose quality of life depends on other people’s decisions.
5 Jobs - Someone relocating from one home to another
People Moving House
The Jobs of someone packing an entire life into boxes in a week.
5 Jobs - Someone in very limited square metres
People Living in Small Spaces
The Jobs of someone making one small space carry many functions.
5 Jobs - Someone working on an aged house
People Restoring an Old House
The Jobs of someone for whom each layer opened can change the whole budget.
5 Jobs - Someone trying to cut a home’s energy costs
People Making a Home Energy-Efficient
The Jobs of someone paying up front for a saving that is hard to verify.
5 Jobs - Someone growing plants at home
People Tending a Garden or Balcony
The Jobs of someone tending something whose feedback arrives too late to act on.
5 Jobs - Someone buying a washing machine, fridge or air conditioner
Buyers of Major Appliances
The Jobs of someone choosing something whose specifications say nothing about the next ten years.
5 Jobs
Hospitality & Travel
- Someone arranging a trip for themselves or their familyOpen
People Planning Their Own Trip
The Jobs of someone choosing where to stay, what to do and how to get there, relying entirely on descriptions written by people with a stake in the choice.
5 Jobs - Someone taking short breaks near where they live
Weekend Trippers Close to Home
The Jobs of someone wanting real rest in two days, half of which goes to the journey.
5 Jobs - Whoever arranges rooms for a large party
People Booking for a Large Group
The Jobs of someone settling one arrangement for a whole group and answerable if it fails.
5 Jobs - Someone travelling on a tight budget
Budget Travellers
The Jobs of someone wanting to see a lot where every choice is a trade-off.
5 Jobs - An older person travelling
Older Travellers
The Jobs of someone for whom every packaged itinerary assumes a different body.
5 Jobs - Someone staying weeks in a place and still working
Long-Stay Travellers Who Also Work
The Jobs of someone staying long enough to need what residents need without a resident’s standing.
5 Jobs - Someone travelling to attend an event
People Travelling for an Event
The Jobs of someone booking everything on exactly the dates everyone else wants.
5 Jobs - Someone leaving their country for the first time
First-Time International Travellers
The Jobs of someone preparing for things nobody told them needed preparing.
5 Jobs - Someone bringing a pet along
People Travelling With a Pet
The Jobs of someone with one more member of the party that almost no service accounts for.
5 Jobs - Someone returning to the same destination repeatedly
Repeat Visitors to One Place
The Jobs of someone on their fifth visit with nothing left in any recommendation list.
5 Jobs