Sources
The research behind the Skills Mirror
Dozens of books, papers and public datasets sit behind the Skills Mirror: research on careers, psychology and the labour market, somewhere most people never have the time to go. MyPirouette's founders chose every source, and we write our own plain-language summary of each one. Claude, the AI model MyPirouette is built on, reads those summaries whenever it writes questions for you, replies to you and scores your Skills Mirror.
Each topic below shows a few of the most recent. The full list is longer and goes back further, and we keep adding to it as we find relevant new research. Last updated 15 October 2026.
How work changed since 2020
The people most likely to leave a job are mid-career, not the youngest, so moving now is not moving late. What pushes them out is rarely pay: how an organisation treats people predicts who leaves far better than what it pays them. Hybrid working turns out not to be the career risk it is assumed to be, though working remotely does quietly thin out the loose connections that surface unadvertised roles.
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Ian Cook (2021). Who Is Driving the Great Resignation? Harvard Business Review.
The people most likely to leave are mid-career, not the youngest. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
Donald Sull, Charles Sull and Ben Zweig (2022). Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation. MIT Sloan Management Review.
How a company treats people predicts who leaves far better than pay does. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
Nicholas Bloom, Ruobing Han and James Liang (2024). Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance. Nature.
Two days a week at home cut quitting by a third and did not dent performance. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Etcetera. The paragraph above is written from the whole of our list for this topic. These are a few of the most recent in it, and the rest goes back further.
Work and artificial intelligence
There is no sign yet of AI removing jobs across the economy, but the entry door is narrowing: employers in AI-exposed fields are hiring fewer young people, while experienced workers hold steady. So the strongest move is usually sideways at your current level, not a restart as a junior. Women hold more of the most exposed jobs, though exposure means tasks changing, not jobs vanishing. And AI is better at some tasks than others that look just as hard, which is worth knowing about any role you are considering.
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Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen (2026). Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence. Stanford Digital Economy Lab working paper.
Fewer 22 to 25 year olds are being hired into AI-exposed jobs; experienced workers show no such gap. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
Pawel Gmyrek, Janine Berg and colleagues (2025). Generative AI and Jobs: A Refined Global Index of Occupational Exposure. International Labour Organization, Working Paper 140.
Women hold more of the most exposed jobs, and the likeliest outcome is jobs changing, not disappearing. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Anders Humlum and Emilie Vestergaard (2025). Still Waters, Rapid Currents: Early Labor Market Transformation under Generative AI. NBER Working Paper 33777.
In Denmark, AI changed which tasks people do but not yet what they earn or how long they work. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Etcetera. The paragraph above is written from the whole of our list for this topic. These are a few of the most recent in it, and the rest goes back further.
How careers change
Career change rarely starts with a plan. It starts with something you did not choose, and what follows is less about thinking than doing: you act your way into a new direction through small, reversible experiments rather than analysing your way there. The uncomfortable middle is part of the process, not a sign you chose wrong. And what predicts pay and promotion is not what predicts satisfaction, so it is worth saying which one you are after.
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Jos Akkermans, David G. Collings, Serge P. da Motta Veiga, Corinne Post and Scott Seibert (2021). Toward a broader understanding of career shocks. Journal of Vocational Behavior.
Career change usually begins with an event you did not choose, not with a plan. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Herminia Ibarra (2023). Working Identity, Updated Edition, With a New Preface: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. Harvard Business Review Press.
Test a new direction with small experiments instead of planning it all in your head first. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
Etcetera. The paragraph above is written from the whole of our list for this topic. These are a few of the most recent in it, and the rest goes back further.
Fit, strengths and energy
Not all hard work drains you. Demands that stretch you can raise your energy, while demands that merely obstruct, ambiguity and politics and friction, only take. Burnout is a mismatch with the job rather than a personal weakness, and it shows up in six places, from workload to fairness to values. Fit itself shows in the moments you lose track of time, and in what other people keep coming to you for.
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Arnold B. Bakker, Evangelia Demerouti and Ana Sanz-Vergel (2023). Job Demands-Resources Theory: Ten Years Later. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior.
Telling a stretching workload apart from pointless friction, which only drains. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter (2022). The Burnout Challenge: Managing People's Relationships with Their Jobs. Harvard University Press.
Burnout as a mismatch with the job, across the six things a role can get wrong. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
Etcetera. The paragraph above is written from the whole of our list for this topic. These are a few of the most recent in it, and the rest goes back further.
Values and psychological flexibility
Most career dilemmas are not a shortage of options. They are two values pulling against each other, and naming them turns a worry you have circled for months into a decision. Goals that fit what you actually value are the ones people keep and reach. And you do not have to wait for the fear to pass: you can act while it is still there, the idea MyPirouette borrows to shape a coaching conversation, never as therapy.
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David L. Blustein, Evgenia I. Lysova and Ryan D. Duffy (2023). Understanding Decent Work and Meaningful Work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior.
Decent work is what everyone is owed; meaningful work is what someone reaches for. Confusing the two is how people end up trying to fix the second while the first is missing. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Frank Martela, Marcos Gómez, Wenceslao Unanue, Sofia Araya, Diego Bravo and Alvaro Espejo (2021). What makes work meaningful? Longitudinal evidence for the importance of autonomy and beneficence for meaningful work. Journal of Vocational Behavior.
Followed over time, two things predict whether work feels meaningful: how much say you have in it, and whether it does someone any good. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Paul E. Flaxman, Arianna Prudenzi and Lucie Zernerova (2022). Acceptance and Commitment Training in the Workplace. The Oxford Handbook of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Oxford University Press.
Where the workplace version stands now: brief training for employees, not therapy. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Etcetera. The paragraph above is written from the whole of our list for this topic. These are a few of the most recent in it, and the rest goes back further.
Designing and testing a move
A direction is worth testing before committing to it: sketch several plausible futures, then prototype the most interesting one as a small piece of real work. Reshaping the job you already have is a genuine alternative to leaving, and a far cheaper experiment than resigning. Who you test it with matters too, because looser acquaintances lead to more new jobs than close friends, who mostly know what you already know.
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Lotta K. Harju, Janne Kaltiainen and Jari J. Hakanen (2021). The double-edged sword of job crafting: The effects of job crafting on changes in job demands and employee well-being. Human Resource Management.
Reshaping your own job cuts both ways: reaching for more interesting work raised engagement and workload together, and burnout with it. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Karthik Rajkumar, Guillaume Saint-Jacques, Iavor Bojinov, Erik Brynjolfsson and Sinan Aral (2022). A causal test of the strength of weak ties. Science.
Looser acquaintances, not close friends, are what actually lead to new jobs. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Etcetera. The paragraph above is written from the whole of our list for this topic. These are a few of the most recent in it, and the rest goes back further.
Women's careers
The barrier that matters most is not the ceiling, it is the first rung: fewer women make the first step into management, so fewer stand on every level above it. About half of lifetime earnings comes from experience built at work, and the moves that build it fastest arrive later for women, which makes bolder moves the lever rather than working harder in the same seat. Women also rate their own workplace culture worse than the men beside them, so ask the women who work there.
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Kweilin Ellingrud, Lareina Yee and Maria del Mar Martinez (2025). The Broken Rung: When the Career Ladder Breaks for Women and How They Can Succeed in Spite of It. Harvard Business Review Press.
About half of lifetime earnings comes from experience, and which moves build it. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
Henrik Kleven, Camille Landais and Gabriel Leite-Mariante (2025). The Child Penalty Atlas. Review of Economic Studies.
How far earnings fall after a first child, and how much the country you work in changes that. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Donald Sull and Charles Sull (2023). The Toxic Culture Gap Shows Companies Are Failing Women. MIT Sloan Management Review.
Women rate their own workplace culture worse than the men beside them do. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
Etcetera. The paragraph above is written from the whole of our list for this topic. These are a few of the most recent in it, and the rest goes back further.
Changing career across countries
Moving abroad under your own steam is a different career event from being posted there: less scaffolding, more of the risk, often more of the upside. Adjustment happens at work, with people and in ordinary daily life all at once, and a partner's adjustment decides as much as your own. Check early whether your profession is regulated where you are going, and treat coming home as a new transition rather than a return.
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Ali Farashah, Tomas Blomquist, Akram Al Ariss and Grace Chun Guo (2022). Perceived employability of skilled migrants: a systematic review and future research agenda. The International Journal of Human Resource Management.
Eighty-eight studies on what makes a skilled migrant feel employable in a new country, and what the country, the employer and the person each contribute to it. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
European Union (2021). Directive (EU) 2021/1883 on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the purpose of highly qualified employment (the EU Blue Card). Official Journal of the European Union.
The current route into the EU for a qualified role from outside it, replacing the 2009 one. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
David R. Ellis, Kaye Thorn and Christian Yao (2020). Repatriation of self-initiated expatriates: expectations vs. experiences. Career Development International.
Moving home goes better for the people who expected it to be hard, which is a thing you can do something about beforehand. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Etcetera. The paragraph above is written from the whole of our list for this topic. These are a few of the most recent in it, and the rest goes back further.
Meaning and ikigai
The four-circle diagram that circulates under this name is a Western invention. The Japanese research the word comes from is quieter and much larger: what makes a life feel worth living, found in relationships and daily practice at least as often as in an occupation. It is not only philosophical, since a long population study links that sense to living longer, and where people find meaning shifts across a life.
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Eugene Y. J. Tee, Saori Tsukamoto and Michael F. Steger (2026). Between Science and Self-Help: A Scoping Review of Scholarly and Popular Definitions of Ikigai. Journal of Happiness Studies.
Sets how the research defines ikigai against how the self-help industry defines it. They are not the same thing, which is why we do not hand anyone the four-circle diagram. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Clemens Koob and Claudine M. Tomic (2025). Ikigai as a Personal Resource for Work Engagement: A Cross-Sectional Study Among Nursing Trainees in Germany. Nursing Reports.
Ikigai measured outside Japan, and at work: a sense of what your life is for tracks how engaged you are in the job, on top of what the job itself gives you. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
Etcetera. The paragraph above is written from the whole of our list for this topic. These are a few of the most recent in it, and the rest goes back further.
Labour market and European law
A large share of the skills any job needs changes within a decade, and demand is moving toward judgement, adaptability and the distinctly human parts of work. On artificial intelligence there is now measurement rather than forecast, and the gains land on the least experienced rather than the experts, which is a warning if your seniority rests on knowing the standard answer. Two European rules, on pay transparency and on board seats, change your standing in a negotiation.
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Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Li and Lindsey Raymond (2025). Generative AI at Work. The Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Measured rather than forecast: AI helped the least experienced workers most, and the experts least. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
World Economic Forum (2025). The Future of Jobs Report 2025. World Economic Forum.
Which roles and skills employers expect to grow and shrink. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
European Commission. ESCO: European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations. European Commission.
A shared European vocabulary for skills and occupations. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
Etcetera. The paragraph above is written from the whole of our list for this topic. These are a few of the most recent in it, and the rest goes back further.
Coaching method
How a conversation is run changes what comes out of it. The Skills Mirror agrees what you want from it, looks honestly at where things stand, widens the options before narrowing them, and ends with something you will genuinely do. It follows the principle that people commit to reasons they reach themselves, which is why you are asked more than you are told, and it is held to published coaching standards.
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International Coaching Federation (2025). ICF Core Competencies. International Coaching Federation.
The professional standard for effective coaching. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
International Coaching Federation (2025). ICF Code of Ethics. International Coaching Federation.
Confidentiality, clear boundaries and referring people on when something goes beyond coaching. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)
Etcetera. The paragraph above is written from the whole of our list for this topic. These are a few of the most recent in it, and the rest goes back further.
About these sources
We summarise each source in our own words and link to the original. We do not copy text from the books or papers, and none of the authors or organisations listed here has reviewed or endorsed MyPirouette.
Want to know more about the full list? Write to hello@mypirouette.co and we will send it to you.