The Career Unicorn (And How We Stop Waiting For It)

from the founder of careercoaching.ie

This week I’ve been thinking less about changing roles and more about how people experience the ones they’re already in.

Not everyone wants to make a big move right now. And not everyone can. Sometimes the role is broadly fine but something within it feels flat or constrained. Other times, the idea of a “better” role exists more in theory than in practice.

And when work feels like that, it’s very easy to slip into waiting.

Waiting for the right opportunity to come up.

Waiting for the perfect role.

Waiting for the unicorn.

I understand the pull. When something feels off, it’s natural to assume the answer lives somewhere else. But what I’ve noticed is how quickly that assumption can leave people feeling stuck - as if the only options are to stay put or leave entirely.

In reality, this is too binary. Most roles have more room for movement than we realise. The difficulty is knowing where or how to move.

Some of the most meaningful shifts I’ve seen didn’t involve a job change at all. In twelve years leading sales, marketing and product marketing teams at Meta, I watched people reshape the work they were already doing: taking on projects that played more to their strengths, expanding their remit slightly or letting go of things that drained them more than they realised.

These weren’t dramatic moves. But they were intentional ones. There’s actually a name for this: job crafting: the idea that you can actively redesign elements of your role to better fit your strengths and motivations, without waiting for permission or a new title.

Small changes can have a surprisingly big impact when they’re aligned with what actually motivates you. And that’s often the missing piece.

We tend to think of motivation as something abstract or emotional, but it’s also very practical. Understanding what motivates you helps you decide what to say yes to, what to push back on and where to focus your energy especially when things feel unclear.

A question I often come back to is this:

If three roles landed in my inbox tomorrow, would I know how to choose?

If the answer is no, that’s not a problem. It just tells you where the work is. And the work usually starts with a few simpler questions: What kind of work actually energises you? What drains you? What do you need from a role right now, not five years ago, but now?

Turning inward first to understand what energises you, what kind of problems you enjoy, what pace suits you right now can bring a huge amount of clarity. It also makes future decisions feel far less random. Instead of choosing between options based on status or escape, you’re choosing through a lens that actually fits you.

This kind of clarity is useful even if you never change roles.

When you’re clear on what motivates you, you can start shaping your current role more deliberately. You can anchor your priorities in work that genuinely matters, look for experience that builds towards what you want next and have more grounded conversations with your manager, not based on vague aspiration but shared context.

The idea of the perfect role is seductive. But it can quietly keep us passive, waiting for something external to change.

Sometimes the work isn’t to find a different role. It’s to understand how to make this one fit better, for now.

Not every phase of a career is about progression. Some phases are about learning, reshaping or creating space. And that isn’t settling.

It’s paying attention and using the levers you actually have.