Hiring A Job And Navigating A Career Begins In K-12 Schools

The jobs-to-be-done theory has implications for K-12 career education.

A successful move from one job to another is not only about organizations hiring individuals to do something for those organizations. It’s also about individuals hiring organizations to do something for themselves. This makes job moves a mutual engagement between the demands of job needers and the supply of job seekers.

This approach to jobs is an application of the jobs-to-be-done theory, described by Clayton Christensen and his colleagues in a 2016 Harvard Business Review article. They write, “People buy products and services to get jobs done, where ‘job’ is shorthand for what an individual really seeks to accomplish in a given circumstance. Jobs are never simply about function—they have powerful social and emotional dimensions.”

Ethan Bernstein, Michael Horn, and Bob Moesta in their forthcoming book Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career, make this theory central to their approach to career development. For well over a decade, they’ve analyzed the activities of thousands of job switchers to distill 9 steps that help job seekers make their next job move.

The book begins by describing the four quests of job seekers: escaping a dead end; regaining control over life at work; aligning work with their knowledge and skills; and moving forward to develop their knowledge and skills and deepen what motivates them. It then details 9 steps for making progress in a career, like ensuring a job seeker builds pattern recognition over job moves, developing a balance sheet of career assets and liabilities, and creating a career story for the marketplace.

Navigating A Career Begins In K-12 Schools

K–12 students often don’t receive information from schools on practical pathways to careers and opportunity. A Morning Consult poll reports that less than half of Gen Z high schoolers said they had enough information to decide the best career or education pathway after high school. Two-thirds of high schoolers and graduates said they would have benefited from more career exploration in middle or high school. This gap between the career preparation that students want and what schools provide leaves students struggling in the transition from school to work, with lower wages when they enter the workforce.

K-12 schools are solving this career education problem by creating education and training frameworks and career navigation services that include partnerships with community colleges, four-year colleges, employers, and other community organizations. The jobs-to-be-done perspective is an important contribution to this work because it sees jobs as a mutual venture with social and emotional dimensions, including support structures, personal guidance, and mentorship.

For example, Colorado’s work-based learning framework includes three categories: learning about work through events like career fairs with industry speakers; learning through work through activities like internships; and learning at work through hands-on experiences like apprenticeships with mentors.

Maryland’s approach is based on career awareness, career exploration, career preparation, and career seeking and advancement. Texas Education Agency’s Work Based Learning Continuum includes descriptions of the roles of providers, K-12 schools, colleges, workforce boards, and other community organizations.

Career navigation includes three elements, according to the Harvard University Project on Workforce: acquiring knowledge about one’s skills and goals, including career training pathways; making informed career plans and charting a pathway to that career; and keeping informed of changing industry standards and taking steps to continue career advancement. These involve support services like coaching and mentoring, tools that help individuals assess their progress, programs and courses that provide knowledge, and structures and organizations like career centers that offer advice and personal support.

Career navigators and navigator organizations are central to these approaches. Career navigators are advisors that provide guidance and information to individuals and families as they explore learning options and career pathways. They help people make informed choices by identifying their strengths, understanding job requirements, and getting the education and credentials needed for career success.

Navigator organizations use technology platforms to collect and aggregate information that assists in the navigation process, including using artificial intelligence to help navigators and their clients. For example, YouScience uses artificial intelligence to create assessments that help young people discover personal strengths and aptitudes and match them to potential careers.

Promising Evidence Of Success

The international 38-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) examined the link between 15-year-old students’ participation in career education and adult career outcomes in 8 countries, including the U.S. The report concludes that there is “evidence that secondary school students who explore, experience and think about their futures in work frequently encounter lower levels of unemployment, receive higher wages, and are happier in their careers as adults.”

A Jobs for the Future report shows how career education develops the technical knowledge and material aspects of success and its relational dimensions, especially for Black learners (and workers). This includes mentoring relationships and professional networks that help them navigate their careers.

Career education also deepens young people’s knowledge of the culture of work and fosters their capacity to aspire to, create, and navigate the work pathways that make their ambitions a reality. Additionally, it has psychological benefits like helping them develop an occupational identity and vocational self, which gives them a better sense of their values and abilities.

On a practical level, career education creates faster and less expensive pathways to jobs and careers. Finally, career education fosters local civic engagement from employers and other community partners by cultivating the connections and bonds essential to innovation, economic dynamism, and a flourishing local civil society.

The Social Nature Of Work

Jobs-to-be-done theory sees a job search as a two-way venture, a cooperative activity between job seekers and job needers. This contributes to making the workplace a social environment that nurtures social capital or networks of relationships between individuals.

The American Perspectives Survey by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) reports that adults name the workplace as the top generator of social capital, greater than places of worship, schools, and neighborhoods. It cites research that shows workplace social capital explains almost 30% of the variation in job satisfaction. It also increases job performance and reduces mental health issues like depression.

The survey finds that more than half of Americans said that they made a close friend in their workplace (42%) or that of a spouse’s or partner’s workplace (10%), though having close friends in the workplace is more likely to occur for those with college degrees (45%) than those without degrees (35%). Additionally, women—no matter what level of education—are social capital catalysts in the workplace. They devote more time and effort than men organizing and participating in workplace social activities, with college-educated women reporting the highest levels of activity.

Finally, there is an educational divide on workplace career guidance and mentoring. More than 6 out of ten (62%) college graduates report that they check in with their boss about career guidance at least occasionally compared to around 4 out of ten (44%) of those without degrees. The college-educated are far more likely to have work mentors (57%) than those with a high school degree (31%). While men and women with degrees are about equally likely to have a mentor (56% versus 57%), working men without a degree are more likely than women to have a mentor (36% versus 26%).

An Opportunity Agenda

The jobs-to-be-done perspective on pathways to jobs and careers has significant implications for young people and K-12 schools. It requires career frameworks that help young people move from career exposure to career exploration to career experiences. Navigating this range of activities helps young people develop the knowledge, skills, and relationship networks they need to pursue opportunity. As the adage reminds us, it is not only what you know but also whom you know. In short: Knowledge + Networks = Opportunity.

The jobs-to-be-done viewpoint also has the potential to help individuals overcome degree and gender differences found in the social workplace. Exposing young people to this approach from the earliest years of schooling and providing them with career navigation support gives young people a way to develop the knowledge, social skills, and networks they need to reach their potential.

Opportunity pluralism is a complement to the jobs-to-be-done perspective. It encourages multiple pathways to work, careers, and opportunity. This makes the nation’s opportunity structure more pluralistic, allowing individuals to pursue opportunity through many avenues linked to labor-market demands. It also aims to ensure that every individual—regardless of background—has pathways to acquiring the knowledge and networks needed for career success.

The jobs-to-be-done approach to careers reorients the goal of K–12 public schools. It suggests a sea change in them, one that has the potential to allow students to gain the economic and social benefits of work, flourish in life, and reach their potential.