Market Research

Jobs to Be Done Market Research: A Complete Guide for Founders

10 min read

You’ve built what you think is a great product, but customers aren’t buying. Sound familiar? The problem often isn’t your product - it’s that you don’t truly understand what job your customers are hiring it to do. Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) market research flips traditional market research on its head by focusing not on demographics or features, but on the underlying progress customers are trying to make in their lives.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk through exactly how to conduct Jobs to Be Done market research, from understanding the framework to running effective customer interviews and turning insights into actionable product decisions. Whether you’re a first-time founder or launching your tenth product, mastering JTBD research will give you a significant competitive advantage.

Understanding the Jobs to Be Done Framework

The Jobs to Be Done framework, popularized by Clayton Christensen, is built on a simple but powerful premise: customers don’t buy products, they “hire” them to get a job done. When someone buys a drill, they’re not buying the drill - they’re hiring it to make a hole. But dig deeper, and they’re actually hiring it to hang a picture, which helps them feel like their house is a home.

This matters because traditional market research focuses on customer attributes (demographics, psychographics) and asks what features they want. JTBD research focuses on the circumstances that cause someone to seek a solution and the progress they’re trying to make. This shift in perspective reveals opportunities competitors miss.

The Core Components of a Job to Be Done

Every job has several key elements you need to understand:

Functional dimension: The practical task to accomplish
Emotional dimension: How customers want to feel
Social dimension: How customers want to be perceived
Circumstances: The context triggering the need
Obstacles: What’s preventing progress
Success criteria: How customers measure if the job is done well

Understanding all these dimensions gives you a complete picture of customer motivation that goes far beyond surface-level feature requests.

Preparing for Jobs to Be Done Research

Before you start interviewing customers, you need to set up your research properly. The quality of your preparation directly impacts the quality of insights you’ll uncover.

Identify Your Research Objectives

Be specific about what you’re trying to learn. Are you exploring a new market? Improving an existing product? Understanding why customers churn? Your objective shapes who you interview and what questions you ask.

For example, if you’re building a productivity app, you might want to understand: What circumstances cause people to seek better productivity tools? What are they currently using? What progress are they trying to make that their current solution doesn’t enable?

Select the Right Interview Candidates

You want to talk to people who have recently “hired” a solution for the job you’re researching - ideally within the last 3-6 months. Recent buyers can recall their decision-making process in detail, including the emotional and circumstantial factors that led to their choice.

Look for candidates who:

Recently purchased or adopted a solution in your space
Switched from a competing product to another
Started using a workaround or non-obvious solution
Represent different customer segments or use cases

Conducting Effective JTBD Interviews

JTBD interviews follow a specific structure designed to uncover the timeline of events, emotions, and circumstances surrounding a purchase or adoption decision. This isn’t a typical user interview where you ask what features they want.

The Interview Structure

A typical JTBD interview lasts 45-60 minutes and follows this flow:

1. Set the Context (5 minutes)
Start by putting the interviewee at ease and explaining you’re trying to understand their story, not evaluate them or sell them anything.

2. Establish the Timeline (10-15 minutes)
Ask them to walk you through the first time they thought about solving this problem. When was it? What triggered that thought? This establishes the “first thought” moment.

3. Explore the Journey (25-35 minutes)
This is the meat of the interview. Walk through their journey from first thought to purchase, asking open-ended questions about each stage:

“What happened next?”
“What were you thinking at that point?”
“How did that make you feel?”
“What did you try first?”
“What almost stopped you from moving forward?”

4. Understand the Outcome (5-10 minutes)
Explore what’s different now that they have the solution. How has their life improved? What progress have they made?

Critical Questions to Ask

The power of JTBD interviews comes from specific questions that reveal circumstances, emotions, and trade-offs:

“When did you first realize you had this problem?”
“What were you doing when you first thought about looking for a solution?”
“What did you try before this?”
“Who else was involved in the decision?”
“What did you give up to get this solution?”
“What almost made you not buy/switch?”
“What would you tell someone considering the same switch?”

Notice these are all about specific moments and real behaviors, not hypothetical preferences or feature wishlist items.

Uncovering Pain Points Through JTBD Research

One of the most valuable outcomes of Jobs to Be Done market research is discovering the specific pain points that motivate people to seek solutions. These aren’t just minor annoyances - they’re significant frustrations that cause people to invest time, money, and effort into finding better alternatives.

When you’re conducting JTBD interviews, pay special attention to the moments where customers describe struggles with their previous solutions. These pain points often fall into categories: the solution was too slow, too expensive, too complicated, didn’t integrate with their workflow, or failed to deliver the emotional or social outcomes they needed.

How PainOnSocial Complements JTBD Research

While one-on-one JTBD interviews provide deep qualitative insights, they’re time-intensive and limited in scale. This is where PainOnSocial becomes invaluable for your market research process. Instead of manually sifting through Reddit threads to find people discussing their problems, PainOnSocial uses AI to analyze thousands of real conversations across 30+ curated subreddits.

The tool surfaces validated pain points with AI-powered scoring (0-100), backed by real user quotes, upvote counts, and permalinks to the original discussions. This helps you quickly identify which problems are most frequent and intense in your target market - perfect for deciding which customer segments to interview or which job stories to explore deeper. You can filter by community size, category, and language to find pain points that align with your JTBD research objectives.

For example, if your JTBD interviews reveal that entrepreneurs struggle with idea validation, you can use PainOnSocial to explore the broader landscape of this pain point across entrepreneurship communities, seeing exactly how people describe this struggle in their own words and what circumstances trigger their need for better validation tools.

Analyzing and Synthesizing JTBD Interview Data

After conducting 6-12 interviews (a typical starting point), you’ll have hours of recordings and notes. The analysis phase is where you turn this raw data into actionable insights.

Create Job Stories

Job stories are a format for capturing the insights from your research. They follow this structure:

When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [expected outcome].

For example: “When I’m launching a new product and need to validate my idea quickly, I want to see what problems people are actively discussing online, so I can build something people actually need instead of guessing.”

Map the Forces of Progress

Bob Moesta’s “Forces of Progress” diagram is a powerful tool for synthesis. It shows four forces acting on a customer:

Push: Problems with the current situation pushing them away
Pull: Attraction to the new solution pulling them forward
Anxiety: Worries about the new solution holding them back
Habit: Comfort with the current situation holding them back

Understanding these forces helps you craft messaging and position your product effectively.

Identify Patterns and Themes

Look for recurring elements across interviews:

Common triggering events or circumstances
Similar pain points with existing solutions
Consistent anxieties or concerns
Comparable success criteria or desired outcomes
Shared emotional goals or social dimensions

These patterns reveal the most important jobs your target market is trying to accomplish.

Turning JTBD Insights into Product Decisions

Research is only valuable if it informs action. Here’s how to apply your JTBD insights:

Product Development

Design features that help customers make progress on their jobs, not just features that sound cool. For each potential feature, ask: “Does this help customers make the progress they’re trying to make? Does it address the circumstances they find themselves in?”

Positioning and Messaging

Use the language customers used to describe their struggles and desired outcomes. Your marketing should speak to the circumstances that trigger the need for your solution and address the anxieties that hold people back.

Competitive Strategy

Remember that your competition isn’t just other products - it’s non-consumption, workarounds, and making do with inadequate solutions. Understanding what customers are “firing” helps you position against the real alternatives.

Customer Segmentation

Segment by jobs, not by demographics. Two people with completely different demographics might have the same job, while two people with similar demographics might have completely different jobs.

Common JTBD Research Mistakes to Avoid

Even experienced researchers make these errors:

Asking hypothetical questions: “What would you do if…” Don’t. Only ask about actual past behavior.
Interviewing the wrong people: Talking to people who haven’t recently made a purchase decision yields poor data.
Leading the witness: Don’t suggest answers or guide them toward what you want to hear.
Ignoring emotional and social dimensions: The functional job is rarely the whole story.
Stopping too soon: Six interviews minimum, but keep going until you stop hearing new information.
Confirmation bias: Looking only for evidence that supports your existing beliefs.

Advanced JTBD Research Techniques

Once you’ve mastered the basics, consider these advanced approaches:

Switch Interviews

Focus specifically on customers who recently switched from a competitor to your product (or vice versa). These reveal the tipping points and anxieties most clearly.

Non-Customer Interviews

Interview people who almost bought but didn’t. What held them back? What anxieties were too strong? What habits kept them from switching?

Observation Research

Combine interviews with observing customers using products in their natural environment. Watch for workarounds, frustrations, and contextual factors they might not articulate in an interview.

Conclusion

Jobs to Be Done market research transforms how you understand customers by shifting focus from who they are to what progress they’re trying to make. By mastering JTBD interviews and analysis, you’ll uncover insights that traditional market research misses - the circumstances, emotions, and trade-offs that drive real purchase decisions.

Start small: conduct 6-8 interviews following the structure outlined here. Listen for the timeline, the triggering events, and the forces pushing and pulling your customers. Synthesize your findings into job stories and force diagrams. Then apply these insights to your product development, positioning, and go-to-market strategy.

The founders who deeply understand the jobs their customers are trying to accomplish build products that resonate. They craft messaging that speaks to real circumstances and anxieties. They identify opportunities competitors overlook. That understanding starts with asking the right questions and truly listening to the answers.

Ready to discover what jobs your customers are really hiring solutions for? Start your first JTBD interview this week. The insights you uncover will be worth far more than the time invested.