The 'unicorn' job: how quiet cutting is rewriting the job description

There was a time when being called a "unicorn" in the jobs market sounded like a compliment. It meant you had an unusual combination of skills, could move comfortably between different areas of a business and brought something to the table that was difficult to find.

Increasingly, though, candidates are looking at some of these "unicorn" jobs and seeing something else entirely: three jobs squeezed into one job description.

The communications manager who is also expected to run social media, internal communications, copywriting and events. The marketer responsible for brand strategy, paid advertising, design and analytics. The office manager responsible for facilities, events, and administrative support.

Individually, none of those responsibilities looks particularly strange. Put them all together, however, and the obvious question becomes: was this always one person's job?

That question is becoming more relevant as another workplace term enters the conversation: quiet cutting.

Quiet cutting emerged as a label for a form of workforce restructuring in which companies move employees into different, sometimes less desirable, jobs rather than making them redundant outright. Instead of a highly visible round of layoffs, an organisation can reorganise teams, remove positions, redeploy people and reduce costs while keeping much of its workforce technically employed.

It is not necessarily as calculated as the name suggests. Companies restructure for legitimate reasons, priorities change and people sometimes need to move where the work is. But when organisations are under pressure to become leaner, the effects can ripple well beyond the employees who are reassigned.

Work still needs to get done. And that is where the unicorn job can enter the picture.

Imagine a fairly ordinary corporate team. It has a manager, two specialists and a coordinator. One specialist leaves and the position is frozen. The coordinator picks up part of the work. The manager takes on the rest.

Six months later, another restructure takes place. The coordinator's position disappears and some of those responsibilities move again. Technology automates a few tasks, an agency takes on another piece, but plenty of work remains. Eventually the business decides it needs to hire. It doesn't necessarily recreate one of the jobs that disappeared. Instead, it looks at everything the team now needs and builds a new role around it.

The resulting job description asks for strategy, execution, stakeholder management, analytics, project management and specialist expertise. The successful candidate needs to be comfortable "wearing many hats", working in a "fast-paced environment" and "operating at both a strategic and hands-on level".

In other words, the company is looking for a unicorn. There may never have been a meeting where somebody deliberately said, "Let's get one person to do three jobs." The role can arrive there gradually, one additional responsibility at a time.

That distinction matters, because the problem isn't that companies suddenly became unreasonable. It is that years of restructures, hiring freezes, efficiency programs and changing technology can alter the shape of a job without anyone stopping to ask whether the final version still makes sense for one human being.

Job descriptions tell candidates far more about a company than employers sometimes realise.

When a relatively mid-level role owns an unusually large number of functions, candidates notice. When the company wants someone who can develop the strategy, execute it personally, manage senior stakeholders, supervise suppliers, analyse the results and handle the administration, they notice that too.

And the salary can make the picture even clearer. A broad job isn't automatically a bad job. In fact, some of the best roles are broad. They give people autonomy, variety, visibility and the chance to develop skills they might never build in a narrowly defined position.

The difference is whether the scope, seniority, resources and salary actually match.

If a business genuinely wants someone capable of operating across several disciplines, that breadth has value. If it wants one person to absorb responsibilities previously carried by several employees without changing the title, support or compensation, "unicorn" starts to sound less like praise and more like a resourcing strategy. Candidates know the difference.

This is why seemingly positive phrases in job ads are increasingly being decoded by job seekers.

"Wear many hats" can mean variety and autonomy. It can also mean there aren't enough people.

"Thrive in ambiguity" can mean you will have freedom to shape the role. It can also mean nobody has clearly decided where your job begins and ends.

"Hit the ground running" can mean the company needs someone experienced. It can also raise questions about how much onboarding or support exists.

"Strategic and hands-on" can describe an excellent senior role. But when it is followed by a list stretching from executive advice to scheduling social posts and updating spreadsheets, candidates are entitled to ask what happened to everyone in between.

There is also a danger for employers here.

Cost cutting may make a team leaner, but continually expanding the next person's job description can eventually make the vacancy harder to fill.

Employers often create long lists because they want to keep their options open. If the previous three employees collectively had 20 skills, why not look for a candidate who has all 20?

Because that person may not exist. Or, more importantly, the people who come closest may look at the role and decide they don't want it.

An experienced candidate can usually recognise when a job has become too large. They know how long good work takes. They understand that being responsible for six functions does not create six extra days in the working week.

So while less experienced candidates may see a huge job description and think, I'm not qualified enough, experienced candidates may see exactly the same ad and think, They haven't resourced this properly.

Either way, the employer loses potential applicants. The pursuit of the perfect unicorn can therefore become strangely self-defeating: the more capabilities a company adds in an attempt to find an exceptional candidate, the smaller the realistic candidate pool becomes.

Possibly. An enormous job description shouldn't automatically put you off, particularly because job ads often describe an employer's wish list rather than the minimum requirements of the role.

Instead, treat the interview as your opportunity to find out how the job became the job.

Ask what the person in the position will spend most of their time doing. Ask which three outcomes matter most in the first six months. Ask what sits with other members of the team and what sits with you.

If it's a replacement role, ask whether the scope is the same as it was for the previous employee.

Ask what has been added. Ask what support exists, whether that's other employees, agencies, technology or budget. And pay attention when everything is described as a priority.

A genuinely broad job should still have priorities. If media relations, strategy, social, events, reporting, stakeholder management, content, administration and transformation are all equally urgent, the problem may not be whether you're capable enough to do the role. The problem may be that nobody could reasonably do all of it well at the same time.

There is a useful challenge here for hiring managers. Before advertising for a unicorn, look at the role and ask why you need one.

Is this genuinely a position that benefits from someone with an unusual combination of skills? Great. Or has the organisation gone through several rounds of restructuring, quietly redistributed work and eventually bundled what remains into the next vacancy?

If it's the latter, the solution may not be finding a more extraordinary candidate. It may be designing a more realistic job.

There is nothing wrong with wanting adaptable people. Businesses are changing quickly, AI is altering tasks and traditional lines between professions are becoming less rigid. Being able to work across disciplines is increasingly valuable.

But adaptability and unlimited capacity are not the same thing. Quiet cutting may help explain why some organisations are trying to achieve more with fewer people. What employers need to be careful of is allowing that thinking to follow them into recruitment, where "doing more with less" becomes "finding one person who can do everything".

Because after enough roles have been combined, redistributed and rewritten, the hardest position to fill may not be the specialist job.

It may be the supposedly perfect "unicorn" role that no real person was ever meant to do.