In a previous column, we explored research-based tips that people can use in managing their careers. We heard from Robert Moesta. With his colleagues Ethan Bernstein and Michael Horn, Moesta is co-author of Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career. In this follow-up, he offers more advice for professionals who are determined to be strategic in their career choices.

To help people avoid regretting a career move, Moesta recommends a “try before you buy” approach.

“This is one of the most important things: learning before switching rather than after switching jobs,” he says. “There are a lot of ways you can do that. Some of the typical ones people recommend are things like job shadowing, or trying on something new as a side gig. But we also believe that if you have clarity over the activities that drive your energy, what capabilities you have and want to lean into, and what tradeoffs you’re willing to make to get those things, then you can have informational interviews with people who actually have different jobs to see how what they do on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis actually does—or doesn’t—line up with the things you want to do.”

He tells about a woman who wanted to have an impact on people by supporting them through ongoing relationships. “When she interviewed a nurse who worked in the ER, she asked how she had impact on people’s lives,” he says. “Of course the nurse pointed to the thousands of patients she had helped get out of the ER. But the woman we coached was able to go deeper and dig into whether that nurse had ongoing relationships with those individuals—because that’s how she defined impact. When the answer was no, she realized that wasn’t the job for her.”

Moesta cites some of the most common job search mistakes people make.

“Many job-seekers “rush to send out resumes and basically frame getting a job as a game of probability rather than understanding what progress looks like for them—and importantly, understanding the tradeoffs they’d willingly make to get that progress,” he says. “A second one is that people tend to focus too much on what they’ll be—the title, the pay, things like that—rather than what they’ll do on a daily basis and how it lines up with what gives them energy. A third is that they forget that job switching is inherently social—meaning you have to get out there and talk to real people in real roles to unpack what they do and how it lines up with what you do. And that that’s how jobs are filled—through your network. By getting out there and sharing what you really want to do—and importantly, what you can’t or won’t do, that’s how you find or create jobs for yourself that fit.

Organizations and managers deal with a lot of employee turnover. Moesta offers advice on how to deal effectively with that challenge.

“Understand why people hired your company,” he says. “What are the forces that caused them to say, ‘Yup, I’ll take this job.’ And then manage with those forces in mind so individuals can get more of the progress they desire and less of what they don’t. That also helps create clarity so you know how someone really wants to contribute—and if you’re the right organization for them. If someone can help you as a company make progress and you’re helping them make progress and you can keep the conversation going to stay in step around those things, you can progress together rather than see employees exit as quickly as they do.”

As many professionals can attest, tradeoffs can play a part in career choices. Moesta has a view on that, too.

“Most people don’t know how to make tradeoffs,” he says, “so they either remain frozen in jobs they quietly quit or don’t contribute well into or they keep jumping into jobs they think are perfect in every dimension but then get disillusioned when they find out they just aren’t. The reality is every job has imperfect elements. There’s no perfect job. But people need a way to figure out what they’re going to tradeoff on so that they can make progress. When you do that, tradeoffs are no longer a dirty word. They are how we make progress. In other words—think progress, not perfection.”