In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Ramya DRozario chats with Ethan Bernstein, associate professor at Harvard Business School, and Michael B. Horn, adjunct lecturer at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and cofounder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation. The two authors discuss their new book, Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career (Harper Business/HarperCollins Publishers, November 2024). Coauthored with Bob Moesta, the book outlines a path forward for job seekers to effectively navigate job transition and achieve long-term satisfaction. The authors share tips not only to help workers incorporate passion and purpose into the career journey but also to help struggling employers retain bright talent. An edited version of the conversation follows, and you can also watch the full video at the end of this page.
Why did you write this book?
Michael B. Horn: Our “why” for writing this book is, in some ways, extremely simple. We want to help many, many more people make a lot more progress than they are making right now. We’ve been building this process. My personal mission statement is to help individuals live lives of purpose and meaning and live up to their potential. Helping them accomplish that starts with progress in careers and in life.
Ethan Bernstein: I am a professor of organizational behavior at the Harvard Business School. I have a tissue box in my office for a reason. As we got to know more, we had much more advice to offer, and the conversations with people who needed the advice got longer. As a result, the line of people who wanted to talk to us seemed to get longer as well. We just wanted to help.
By revealing these nine activities, providing the framework, and sharing the rigorous research that informs the forces—the pushes and pulls and the quests—our hope is that we’re contributing to making a difference, both for individuals and for the organizations that employ them.
This book is quite action oriented. Could you explain the concept behind it?
Michael B. Horn: We really wanted to write a book that didn’t just help people transactionally “get that next job” or “hack the job-searching process.” Instead, we wanted to help people make concrete progress in their lives so that they don’t find themselves revisiting the same steps and reasons that they quit their previous jobs.
Ethan Bernstein: After speaking with thousands of job movers, we found they mentioned at least one thing in common: those who had been successful had really thought about not just “being hired by” their next organization or job. Rather, they considered “hiring” their next job based on the progress they wanted to make in their own careers.
I’m a qualitative researcher, and I like hearing people’s stories. The subjects revealed that they’d moved, in part, because the organization they were working for had offered them “progression.” They wanted to advance, but those goals didn’t align with what they were being offered.
Michael B. Horn: Given those stories, we began actively coaching many job seekers. We started with cohort-focused approaches, based on what we learned in the data, to determine what worked and what didn’t work, for whom and why. We adjusted the process a few times. After that and years of Ethan’s class, we developed a robust process that worked for many people. Ultimately, the nine steps that we recommend in the book work within a job seeker’s typical search process.
Ethan Bernstein: It’s a “work smarter”—not “work harder”—kind of approach.
Keeping these nine steps in mind, how long should this process be?
Michael B. Horn: From the research we conducted, there are four broad “quests.” These represent the reasons someone leaves a job and the motivations for pursuing a specific opportunity. Some people gleaned the insights automatically, but others remained at a particular stage for a longer period, considering, “What really drives me at work? What are the things that drive my energy? What drains my energy?”
Ethan Bernstein: The variable that we can’t predict is the social process. You could speak with other people who are close to you or those who know you well enough or understand the role you’re seeking well enough that they can be useful. The process of identifying those people, having those conversations, and incorporating their feedback can take a very short amount of time or a longer amount, depending on the situation.
How should job seekers navigate their expectations versus reality?
Michael B. Horn: A lot of people think that there is a “perfect job” that will be great on all dimensions. In reality, all of us have different jobs that have great points in certain ways and parts that are not ideal in other ways. Our broader argument is that if you understand what “progress” means for you, you understand your quest: what drives your energy and your direction, in terms of your current capabilities and the capabilities you’re seeking to develop. If you can prioritize which of those are the most important, you can say, “OK, I’m willing to trade off on the bigger title or the more prestigious company because I get to do all these other things that are really important to me.”
Our other argument is based on helping people achieve satisfaction in whatever they ultimately do. If you recognize the trade-offs you make up front in a very conscious way, you’re much less likely to complain about them later.
Ethan Bernstein: This is not a book about your dream job. This is a book about making trade-offs and smart decisions about trade-offs. Just because you’re on a quest today doesn’t mean you won’t be on a different quest in five years. The set of trade-offs may be very different. Any worthwhile book that covers careers should address trade-offs, not dream jobs.
Assets are built by you at a measurable cost, and they depreciate over time. It’s all about maintaining a pool of assets that is relevant to what you want to do.
What are some of the biggest mistakes job seekers make?
Michael B. Horn: One of the biggest mistakes is not understanding what progress looks like. A person could take a job that seems great and is a departure from previous responsibilities. Yet without an understanding of the undesirable elements, one could end up at the same starting point.
Ethan Bernstein: Oftentimes, when we’re trying to give advice, we refer to “strengths and weaknesses.” The problem with both of those words is that every time I hear them, I think, “I was born with those strengths and weaknesses.” We prefer thinking of them as “assets.” Assets are built by you at a measurable cost, and they depreciate over time. It’s all about maintaining a pool of assets that is relevant to what you want to do.
Make a relationship first. Have a conversation that’s not transactional. Get to know what they’re [employers] really looking for, and how it does or doesn’t fit with what you’re really looking for.
How can one stay relevant in their current workspace?
Michael B. Horn: To stay relevant, we recommend that job seekers keep completing informational interviews and networking with people. In our view, job seeking and information gathering is fundamentally a social process. In the book, we share an approach that is different from your normal informational interview. What we want you to glean from these informational interviews is, “What’s your actual day-to-day and week-to-week like?” We also want to know how that aligns with your career goals, in terms of the capabilities you have and want to develop, the skills that drive your energy, and those that drain it.
Ethan Bernstein: We make progress by moving. That’s part of the reason we want people to be better at it: because they’ll make more progress. There should be an open conversation about progression, yet we find people speak about it very rarely. Some of that is shyness, some of that is concern about how people will respond to that discussion at work or at home. The more social we can make this process, the better. Whether they’re informational interviews or just conversations with management or with human resources, we encourage both entities—the employee and the employer—to ask, “What quest are you on? What are the forces at work? How can we manage that within this role? And if we can’t, how do we think about the next one?”
Michael B. Horn: When you take those steps, you remain relevant. You’re clearer on what the marketplace is seeking, what the in-demand roles are, and how they have changed over the past two years. One of the biggest mistakes that we see happens when people begin sending multiple job applications because they see something and say, “Oh, that sounds kind of cool.” I respond by saying, “Make a relationship first. Have a conversation that’s not transactional. Get to know what they’re really looking for, and how it does or doesn’t fit with what you’re really looking for.”
How has the job market changed since the pandemic?
Ethan Bernstein: It has been roughly 26 years since McKinsey published “The war for talent.”1 It was not the first time that phrase had been used, as far as I know, but it was the first time it really captured executives’ attention—the world’s attention. Yet the prescriptions from that article still work, organizations are still implementing them, and they have changed quite a bit as well, in addition to what existed before the pandemic.
We had shifting preferences in the workplace and shifting definitions of “productivity,” “work–life,” and “work environments.” These shifting definitions, the preferences that were attached to them, and the fact that people were managing themselves on a daily basis, suddenly became the challenges and the responsibilities of organizations instead when the pandemic ended. The desire for those preferences, coupled with the speed of change and the shelf life of what remains relevant and what doesn’t, has led to a level of impatience that continues to accelerate that trend toward more moves and shorter tenures within roles.
Michael B. Horn: We have a stereotype of Gen Z as impatient and desiring leadership right away. Of course, the youngest generation does. We’re telling them, accurately, that the half-life of skills is shrinking faster than it ever has before, as AI is blowing up whole functions and roles. We don’t know how AI is reinventing work, yet we have important studies from McKinsey illustrating the millions of jobs that will be impacted due to the advancement of AI, automation, and more through 2030. Gen Z is impatient because they’re scared. The level of anxiety is high. They want to know how these changes will affect them and how they can use their current capabilities to maximum effect. In many ways, we’ve seen an acceleration of that anxiety or churn in the market, and they’re making demands.
How can job seekers overcome the challenge of networking in an age of remote work?
Michael B. Horn: It’s really hard on entry-level workers who are coming into the workplace and are not able to build relationships or get to know people. They want to work in the office, or they want to at least have connection at certain times. Sometimes they don’t know it, but it would help them in their careers to connect. The reverse is true as well. Certain midcareer individuals, more than the senior managers, say, “I want to be at home, I want to be with family, I have different priorities, I want to regain control.”
We have to build the muscle within organizations that leads to behavior that does not necessarily mean command and control, that is, in-office work 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. or three specific days a week. Instead, managers and mentors can be very intentional about making sure employees are building that reservoir of social capital across the firm, across the industry, outside the industry, so they have access to opportunities and information that guide their future decision making.
Ethan Bernstein: I hope we’ve chipped away at the problem with this book by sharing activities to accomplish that. People can actually articulate their energy drivers and drains, the capabilities they’re seeking to build. Managers can talk more about what they do and how that relates to various prototypes people might have for their next role they envision, the same way that new-product development is achieved. People can offer a career story that’s compelling. It’s built not only on being told, “have an elevator pitch.” It’s also built on sharing a story—one they can communicate easily—that captures learning through the self-introspective process we engage them in.
How can one cultivate a mentor–mentee relationship?
Michael B. Horn: That is a huge challenge. In the book, we try to say, “It’s not just about having the mentor; you can have a ‘board of directors,’ a few mentors.” Finding that single, magical person who will have all the answers to your questions is not possible.
Part of the cultivation process is lowering the anxiety to find a mentor. If you really do the work with people who initially care about you—loving people in your life, your manager, and people in that vein, you will start to develop a keener sense of what drives you at work, those capabilities that really light you on fire. We’re trying to say, “This is an organic opportunity to connect. And if you have something to give them to really show that you’ve put in thought, they’ll have something to give you as well.”
Ethan Bernstein: We’re just as instructional for mentors as we are for everyone else. We have a chapter written for mentors. The book is designed so that a person can take the chapter to a mentor, a potential mentor—maybe to somebody who’s never mentored before—and say, “Here’s what it means to be my mentor in this process. All you need to do is to follow these instructions. I’ll follow my instructions, and we’ll make progress together.” That lowers the bar for the search for the “perfect mentor.” It lowers the bar because you’re just looking for somebody who knows you, knows the context, and is smart enough to have that conversation.
How can companies create a thriving work environment?
Ethan Bernstein: Once research reveals all the pushes and pulls that cause people to change jobs and that information is shared with managers and organizations who aren’t considering these possibilities, they tend to see a list of “why people quit.” They see a list of “all the ways that they can try to keep people from quitting.” If they only understood which forces were at work at a particular moment in time, they could ask staff, “So, which of these pushes and pulls are functioning for you right now?”
Having employers understand those forces could mean having a conversation about how to retain you that doesn’t involve less-than-ideal solutions, such as money or other perks. Those might keep you in your role for two months, but they’re not going to keep you for ten. What will keep you is knowing that you’re going to make the progress you want to make within this role and that you have a manager who cares about helping you do so. That’s what people management can be. That’s the basic umbrella for what we can offer to organizations. But it goes much deeper than that.
Michael B. Horn: Once you understand these pushes and pulls, we recommend that this becomes part of the performance management system for companies. When you ask, “How many of you are doing the role that you were hired for based on what the job description said?” Almost no one’s hand goes up. No one is actually doing what the job descriptions say. We asked ourselves, over and over again, “Well, why do we keep writing job descriptions with long laundry lists of skills that may or may not have anything to do with what you’re actually going to do in the role?” Ultimately, we concluded that, at the end of day, they’re really just legal documents. They’re ways to hire and fire and protect the employer. They’re not really descriptive of what someone is actually going to do, the experiences in that job.
One of the big things that we recommend for employers who must have the job description the way it is written, is to at least develop a shadow job description that describes the day-to-day and week-to-week elements of the role. That way, prospective employees could understand if the description incorporates their preferences and passions and more easily recognize a potential fit. Otherwise, they may say, “Oh, they’re looking for unicorns. I have to puff up my chest and look like a superhero to get them to hire me.”
Ethan Bernstein: Once you know what you want to do, as opposed to what you want to be, then to some extent, you’re a consumer. We know today that one of the big shifts in consumer behavior is that we all expect “a customized user experience.” If people grow up that way, they start to expect customized experiences as employees as well. Now, you’re actually capable of having a conversation about how to provide that. You could potentially meet some of those shifting preferences and definitions that we saw during the pandemic.
Was there anything that surprised you in the research, writing, or response?
Michael B. Horn: One thing always surprises me. When you’re in your office imagining why people do anything in the world, you can come up with all sorts of reasons and all sorts of jobs to be done that they have in their lives. I’ve learned consistently to have the humility that I’m not smart enough to know what those elements are until we actually get on the ground and watch people’s stories as they switch jobs, and then understand what the quests are.
I would not have imagined the quests that we gleaned. More so, I would not have imagined the forces that we discovered. Frankly, the outgrowth of the process was a surprise. It was revelatory. When it started helping me in my own career and in my own decisions, that was a surprise as well. That’s not one of the reasons we wrote the book. Yet it’s powerful when you avoid potential mistakes because you used your own research to help guide you.
Ethan Bernstein: When you are a researcher, especially a qualitative researcher, there are two things you fear: “I won’t be able to collect enough data” and “It won’t end up telling me anything after I’ve collected all of it.” Admittedly, we chose a topic where collecting data only got easier. The Great Resignation in particular made it very easy for us to hear a lot of stories—a lot of painful stories but also stories of progress. The second thing was the one that surprised me more, though. We reached a point at which we coalesced on these pushes and pulls faster than I would have imagined.
There was far more agreement across data points, even several ones. We tried to be very diverse—in who we talked to, their career stages, locations in the world, backgrounds—in all things. Across tremendous diversity there was extraordinary commonality, not so much commonality such that there was only one quest, but enough that there weren’t 100 pushes and pulls. They could be easily distilled down to 30. That was surprising. I expected there to be much more variation out there than there actually was.
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