Next Step Jobs Methodology
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Overview
This page explains how Tallo finds and recommends jobs in the Next Step Jobs section of the Jobs page. Our goal is transparency— so you always understand why a job was recommended and what data supports it.
We walk through the data we use, how we identify realistic career moves, and how we determine which job transitions offer meaningfully better outcomes. You'll also see how we decide which jobs to show first, why we rely on historical job transitions, and the limits of what this system can (and can't) tell you. If you've already seen Next Step Jobs on Tallo, this page is your reference for how those recommendations are generated.
How Next Step Jobs Recommendations Work
When you tell Tallo your current role, we use that information to identify occupations that real workers in your role have successfully transitioned into— ones with better pay and stronger job security than where you are now. We then surface live job postings in those occupations on the Job Search page, so you're not just seeing a list of theoretical career moves. You're seeing actual jobs worth moving to— ones you can apply to today.
Example:
If your current role is Retail Associate/Cashier, we might recommend Customer Service Representative roles because 7 out of 10 required skills overlap with your current role, and thousands of workers have made this job transition— with an average wage increase in the process.
We combine three data sources:
Your current role to understand the type of work you do and the skills behind it
Historical job transitions from Opportunity@Work's STARS Mobility Data Model— showing which career moves have actually been made by real workers
Job Scorecard scores that measure the quality of the destination job (based on Pay Growth and Job Security)
Current Role
To understand what your current role has in common with other positions, we map every job title to a standardized occupation code using an established occupation taxonomy. This lets us compare skills and career paths across jobs even when employers use different titles for similar work.
When you set your current role, we use its occupation code to look up which job transitions real workers have made from that role.
You can update your current role at any time from Settings > Job Search.
Historical Worker Transitions
Our recommendations aren't AI-generated predictions or guesses about what might work for you. They're grounded in historical data from over 70 million U.S. workers— real job transitions made between 2013 and 2022. If a move appears in your recommendations, it's because people in roles like yours have actually made it.
We look at three things: skill similarity between your current role and the target role, how many workers made the job transition successfully, and the wage gain those workers experienced.
Skill Similarity
We only recommend job transitions where the skills required in the destination role substantially overlap with the skills in your current role.
We use Opportunity@Work's STARS Mobility Data Model (SMDM), which tracks real worker job changes from 2013–2022. This data tells us which occupations are considered similarly skilled based on:
- A skill‑similarity flag indicating that the two occupations share a meaningful portion of their required skills
- A quantitative skills distance score measuring how closely the required skills of two occupations align
- Whether workers regularly make this kind of job transition
If real workers have made the move, we can show it as a proven pathway.
Example:
If your current role is Retail Associate/Cashier with 7 of 10 required skills for Customer Service Representative, we'll rank that job transition higher than one where you only have 3 of 10 skills in common.
Transition Volume
We also look at how many workers successfully made the job transition from your current role to the recommended one.
We require a meaningful number of workers to have made the move— because we want to show you proven pathways, not job transitions that only one or two people have attempted.
Wage Gain
Where available, we factor in the average wage change for workers who made the job transition. We prioritize moves where workers experienced real, measurable improvement in their earnings.
Job Quality
We only recommend jobs that score higher than your current role— meaning they offer meaningfully better pay growth, job security, or both.
This score comes from our Job Scorecard, which evaluates Pay Growth and Job Security for each occupation. When we surface a recommendation, it's because the destination job outscores your current one on that composite measure.
Example:
A Retail Associate/Cashier role has a Job Scorecard composite of 40 (Pay Growth = 2 + Job Security = 2, normalized to 0–100). A Customer Service Representative role scores 60 (Pay Growth = 3 + Job Security = 3). If this occupation also has strong skill similarity and transition volume, we'll recommend it as a job worth moving to.
Limitations and Disclaimers
No Guarantees
Historical job transitions do not guarantee the same results for you. Job markets change, individual circumstances vary, and past data doesn't predict your specific outcome. These recommendations show you moves that have worked for others— not promises of what will happen for you.
Based on Your Current Role
These recommendations are personalized to your current role, not your specific skills or work history. We use your stated role as the starting point. The more accurately it reflects what you actually do, the more relevant your recommendations will be.
Geographic Scope
In the current phase, job quality scores and transition data are based on national U.S. data. Recommendations show live jobs near your location, but the underlying pay and security scores reflect national trends. Local job markets may differ. We're working to add metro‑level filtering in a future update.
Data Coverage
Next Step Jobs Recommendations are available for jobs across all of our career categories.
If you don't see recommendations, it may be because:
- We don't have enough historical job transition data for your current role.
- There are no live jobs near you in the recommended occupations right now. Check back as new jobs are posted.
Ranking
When multiple similarly‑skilled, higher‑scoring jobs qualify, we rank the recommendations using:
Job quality improvement (how much better the destination job scores vs. your current role)
Skill similarity (how closely the required skills align)
Historical transition volume (how many workers successfully made the move)
This ensures we surface the most realistic and proven job transitions first.
Data Freshness
The STARS Mobility Data Model is updated annually. Recommendations are stable between updates and are recomputed automatically when new data is available.
Questions
Contact us at support@tallo.com with questions or issues about our Next Step Jobs Recommendations. We're committed to transparency. If you believe a recommendation is inaccurate or irrelevant to your situation, let us know so we can investigate.