Jobs to be done: why people hire a product
updated 17 October 2026
Jobs to be done (JTBD) is the idea that people don't buy products for their own sake. They "hire" a product to get a job done, meaning to make progress in a specific situation. The job stays the same when products change: people needed to get across town before cars existed, and they still do.
Clayton Christensen popularised the framework at Harvard Business School, and practitioners such as Tony Ulwick and Bob Moesta have built their own methods on it.
Why it matters for B2B teams
JTBD moves attention from who the buyer is to what they are trying to do. Two buyers with the same job title can hire your product for different jobs, and two very different companies can hire it for the same one.
A job statement usually has three parts: the situation, the motivation and the expected outcome. "When a client sends a vague brief (situation), I want to turn it into a clear scope (motivation), so the project doesn't overrun (outcome)."
That helps with:
- Positioning. You describe the progress the buyer makes instead of the features.
- Competition. Your real competitors include spreadsheets, interns and doing nothing.
- Search. Buyers describe jobs in their own words, so you learn which phrases to watch for.
How it shows up in public posts
People asking for help in public often state the job almost word for word. These sample sentences are scored 0 to 100 for buying intent, the way HearBuyers scores posts:
- Sample, score 90. "When a new client signs, I need them to sign the agreement, see the invoice and pay by card in one link. What tool does that?" Situation, motivation and outcome are all there, plus a request.
- Sample, score 57. "Onboarding new clients takes me half a day of admin." The job is clear, but they aren't looking to hire anything yet.
- Sample, score 6. "Jobs to be done is just personas with extra steps." This is an opinion about the framework.
The first sample paraphrases a request our scan found in the SaaS niche on 2026-10-16.
Common mistakes
- Writing jobs too broadly. "Grow my business" is a goal. A job names the situation.
- Confusing jobs with features. "Export to PDF" is a feature. "Send a client something they can sign today" is the job.
- Skipping the emotional side. Many B2B jobs include "and not look bad in front of my boss".
- Guessing instead of listening. The best job statements come from what buyers say. See customer research methods.
Related terms
- Pain points: the friction that makes a job hard.
- Voice of customer: the raw words job statements come from.
- Buyer persona: a profile of who buys, which JTBD complements.
- Ideal customer profile: which companies are worth selling to.
Write your product's main job as one sentence, then put its key phrase into the Reddit search tool to see how buyers say it.
The quickest way to find the job is customer discovery interviews about the last time the problem came up.
See who is asking for what you sell
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