We are often told that it’s impossible to learn about what it’ll be like to be enrolled in college because it’s “an experienced good”— a product or service where its characteristics are difficult to observe in advance and can only be understood during consumption.

Many have told us the same is true, however, about taking a new job. That you can only learn what it’s like after you take it.

Yet the research in our recent book “Job Moves”—and the actual work we’ve done coaching hundreds of job switchers—shows that’s not necessarily true. We can “learn before switching” what a new job will be like—and more specifically how it lines up with our priorities, the things that give us energy and our assets.