How to find work you love: Bob Moesta on the Job Moves framework

Executive overview

Most people switch jobs and end up somewhere worse — not because of bad luck, but because they don't know themselves well enough to make a good choice. Job features (salary, title) attract people; job experiences keep them — or drive them out.

Bob Moesta's framework, built from over 1,000 interviews, helps you identify what's pushing you out of your current role, what's pulling you toward something new, and how to prototype your next move before committing.

The core insight: employees hire companies more than companies hire employees — so the real skill is learning how to hire your job.

The four quests: why people actually leave

Every job change falls into one of four categories:

• Get out — drained, suffocated, can't think straight; need space to breathe before deciding anything
• Take the next step — current role has no growth path; need a move big enough to reach the level after next
• Regain control — work has taken over life; need to reclaim time and balance, especially after a high-intensity stretch
• Regain alignment — drifted into work you don't love; need to get back to what you're actually good at and energised by

Understanding your quest shapes everything that follows — what to look for, what to trade off, and what "progress" means for you right now.

Energy drivers and drains

• Identify past moments when you left a situation with more energy than you entered — those are drivers
• Identify moments that depleted you — those are drains; often map to your bottom-five StrengthsFinder results
• Most people spend 95% of their time on drains; shifting toward 50/50 makes work feel effortless
• Don't stay at the surface ("I love the beach") — dig to causation ("I need novelty and spontaneous social interaction")
• Reflect over two weeks, not one sitting; memories surface gradually on walks and in quiet moments
• These become design requirements for your next job, not aspirational preferences

The jobcation

• A jobcation is a deliberately less demanding role taken to rest and recover between high-intensity chapters
• Particularly important after a startup exit — the context has reshaped you; you need time to become yourself again
• Get comfortable doing nothing before making the next big move; comfort with stillness reveals who you actually are
• A jobcation doesn't have to be hidden — some employers will hire you on that basis and appreciate the honesty
• Recognise when it's over: once it stops being challenging, it's time to move on

Prototyping your next job

• Once you know your quest and energy profile, go wide — don't assume you must stay in your industry
• Conduct 10–15 informational interviews with people doing jobs that interest you
• Ask what the role is actually like day-to-day; many ideals collapse on contact (a "travel + science" dream turned out to be travel-agent admin)
• These interviews double as interview practice — you become fluent in talking about yourself
• Narrow down to one target area, then pursue it with clarity and honesty about what you bring and what you don't

Making trade-offs

• No job checks every box; the goal is making a trade-off you can live with and commit to
• Name the trade-off explicitly out loud — this converts it from anxiety into a decision
• Once made, don't relitigate it: you chose learning over salary, so don't resent the salary
• Consider what hobbies, side work, or team members can cover the energy drivers a job can't provide
• Overpaying reduces risk-taking; people optimise for not losing the bonus rather than doing their best work

Crafting your career story

• Use the Pixar story spine: Once upon a time… Every day… One day… Because of that… Until finally… Ever since…
• Distil to one sentence: what is the thread that runs through everything you've done?
• The story makes abstract experience concrete — interviewers can see the journey and ask follow-up questions
• Practise the story in informational interviews before using it in job interviews

Hiring and keeping great people

• Rewrite job descriptions as experiences, not features ("you'll be building…" not "must have 5 years' experience")
• "Five years' experience" is a lazy filter — specify what that experience actually provides
• Try to fit the job to the person, not the person to the job; reshape roles for people worth keeping
• Ask candidates about their energy drivers and drains; the ability to articulate them signals self-awareness
• Regularly discuss what "progress" means to each person on your team — if they stop progressing, they will leave

Using the framework as a founder

• Self-awareness about strengths and drains tells you what kind of founder to be and what team to build around you
• Talk to founders before committing — prototyping applies here too
• Confusing activity with productivity is the most common early-founder mistake (logos and websites before product)
• The framework also works as a monthly check-in: identify what's pulling you out of alignment and delegate or drop it