Customers & Research

When is the job someone hires my product for actually an emotional or social one, not a functional one?

A starting point

More often than founders assume, because we default to functional explanations and miss the feeling underneath. People hire products to feel competent, to look good to a boss, to avoid looking foolish, and those social and emotional jobs frequently outweigh the functional one. As a starting point, after you've nailed the functional job, ask how the customer wants to feel and how they want to be seen, then check whether your product delivers that too.

Go deeper

Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time.

3 resources 3 link-checked Listen Read

Listen

🎧 Podcast
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Why we picked it Bob Moesta helped build the JTBD method alongside Christensen, and here he is specific about how to catch the non-functional job in a live interview: listen for the energy, the anticipation, the reward, and the social part, not just the task someone says they were doing. This is the practical companion to the book, showing you what to actually probe for when a customer explains a purchase. Treat his questions as prompts to adapt, not a script to recite.

Bob Moesta on Jobs-to-be-Done (Inside Intercom podcast)

On Inside Intercom by Bob Moesta with Intercom about 30 min

  • Do not accept the surface reason: dig into what the person was doing, the energy behind it, and the reward they were chasing to surface the emotional and social job.
  • Talk to people who just bought and people who just quit, because the switch moment exposes the push and pull forces functional questions miss.
  • Emotion and hesitation in an interview are signals, so follow them rather than smoothing past them.
Open intercom.com →

Read

📖 Book
✓ Link checked Paid Beginner

Why we picked it This is the book that put the language of functional, emotional, and social jobs into every product person's vocabulary. When you are trying to figure out whether someone is hiring your product to feel a certain way or to be seen a certain way, this is the source the whole idea traces back to. Read it as a starting point, then go run your own interviews.

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

From HarperBusiness by Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, David S. Duncan 288 pages

  • A job is never only functional: it carries an emotional layer (how the person wants to feel) and a social layer (how they want to be seen), and those often outweigh the practical task.
  • People do not buy products, they hire them to make progress in a specific circumstance, so the circumstance is where the real job hides.
  • The milkshake and mattress cases show how a plain functional read of a purchase can miss the actual reason someone switched.
Open goodreads.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Why we picked it Once you know the three layers exist, you need to see them in real products, and this piece is concrete about it: a luxury watch bought to feel accomplished, a hybrid car chosen to be seen as environmentally conscious, a tote bag carried as a values signal. It walks through everyday purchases (coffee, athletic shoes, skincare) and pulls out where the emotional or social job is doing the real work. A quick, plain read to calibrate your eye before you talk to customers.

Understanding the Types of Jobs Consumers Hire Products For (Functional, Emotional, and Social)

From SIVO Insights by SIVO Insights about 10 min read

  • The same functional job (tell time, get from A to B) can hide very different emotional and social jobs, and the non-functional one is often why someone actually chose your product.
  • Emotional jobs are about how the buyer wants to feel (confident, calm, cared for); social jobs are about how they want to be perceived by others.
  • Naming which layer dominates changes how you position and market, not just what you build.
Open mrx.sivoinsights.com →

People also ask

What does 'jobs to be done' actually mean? People don't buy products, they 'hire' them to make progress in a specific situation, the famous milkshake was hired to make a boring commute beara... Beginner 2 resources → How is JTBD different from features, personas, or user needs? Personas describe who; JTBD describes the progress they're trying to make and the struggle that pushes them to switch. Features are your answer; th... Intermediate 2 resources → How do I actually uncover the job my customers are hiring my product for? Interview people who recently switched to or bought something in your space and reconstruct the timeline: what triggered the search, what they used... Intermediate 3 resources → Who are my real competitors once I think in jobs to be done? Anything the customer currently 'hires' to get the same job done, including a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group, a competitor, or doing nothing at all.... Intermediate 3 resources → How do I turn a job to be done into product and messaging decisions? Write the job as a struggling-moment statement ('when I ___, I want to ___, so I can ___') and use it as the filter for what to build and how to pi... Advanced 2 resources → How many customer interviews do I need before I trust the job I've found is real? There's no magic number, but the honest signal is repetition: when your last three interviews stop surprising you and start confirming the same str... Intermediate 3 resources →