Career Switch Podcast: Expert advice for your career change · Lixandra Urresta

50: An inside track to a career change

·37 min·2 clips

Mia built a PowerPoint deck for a coffee chat and used it to stand out for the internal role.

Career Switch Podcast opens with a direct push to take action on a career change. Alexandra Uresta sets the tone as a place for real stories and practical career advice. Mia Villareal is the guest. She shares how she moved from social media strategist to product marketing manager within VMware. The shift happened inside the same organization over a couple of years. Mia first joined VMware as a contractor in 2020. From there, she kept looking for ways to grow internally. She used LinkedIn to find people working in product marketing. Because she was already inside the company, she also used the internal chat platform to reach out. The conversation treats that access as an advantage because it feels more casual than contacting a stranger online. A coworker she had done a coffee chat with later told her about an opening on the blockchain team. Mia says she prepared a deck for the process after getting advice from another colleague. When the chance to switch came up, she felt a strong wave of emotion. She did not have blockchain experience. She had only watched a few YouTube videos and followed the topic in the news. She also had not worked in product marketing yet. That left her with a double layer of doubt. Mia talks plainly about imposter syndrome and the feeling that the role was a long shot. The conversation then turns to what helped. She leaned on mentors she had already built trust with, people she had gone to before for interview advice and career guidance. Alexandra keeps the focus on the steps that made the move possible. The episode ends by reinforcing the value of talking to mentors, network contacts, and past colleagues about what comes next. It leaves the listener with a simple idea: career moves often start with ordinary conversations.

As heard by us

A practical look at moving into a new role from inside the same company.

The piece keeps the focus practical. Mia Villareal is shown moving from social media strategist to product marketing manager within the same company, and that detail gives the story its shape.

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Need a roadmap for switching roles without changing companies?

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