Latest / The Internal Move Podcast with Fexingo: Lateral Roles, Internal Transfers, and Staying at Your Company / How to Rebrand Yourself for an Internal Transfer
Transcript
- Lucas: So you've been at your company for two and a half years. You got promoted once, maybe eighteen months ago. But when you walk the halls — metaphorically, or literally if you're back in an office — people still treat you like you're in your old job. Luna: Right. The 'you' that lives in your coworkers' heads is outdated. And that becomes a real problem when you want to move laterally or even diagonally into a different function. Lucas: Exactly. Today we're talking about the internal reputation lag — and how to intentionally rebrand yourself inside your own company before you apply for a transfer. Let's start with a concrete case. Luna: Give me a name. Lucas: Let's call her Priya. She joined a mid-size B2B software firm — about eight hundred employees — as a social media marketing manager. She was good. Within eighteen months she was promoted to senior marketing manager, overseeing a team of three. But her actual day-to-day work had shifted: she was building product launch campaigns, working with the product team on positioning, even sitting in on roadmap meetings. Luna: So she was basically doing product marketing work, but her title still said 'marketing' and everyone still thought of her as the person who ran the Instagram account. Lucas: Exactly. And when she started expressing interest in a product manager role that opened up in the platform team, she got pushback. Not from the hiring manager directly — but from stakeholders who said things like, 'Priya is great, but she doesn't have product experience.' The thing is, she did. They just didn't see it. Luna: So how do you fix that? Because rewriting your resume internally isn't really the answer — most internal applications just get routed through a portal that your manager sees anyway. Lucas: Right. Internal rebranding is a communication exercise, not a document exercise. You need to change the mental model that key people have of you. And the first step is figuring out who those key people actually are. Luna: I'm guessing it's not everyone you've ever sent a Slack message to. Lucas: No. Research from a 2023 Harvard Business Review piece on internal mobility suggested that your professional reputation inside a company is shaped by roughly three to five people who act as 'narrative nodes.' They're the ones whose opinion of you gets repeated. For Priya, those people were her current manager, the VP of marketing she'd worked with on a launch, and a senior engineer she'd partnered with on a product beta. Luna: So she needs to change how each of those three sees her. But they already have a strong mental model of her as the social media person. Lucas: Exactly. And you don't change that with one conversation. You need a sequence. The first conversation is what I call the 'rebrand reveal' — a one-on-one where you explicitly name the gap between what you used to do and what you're doing now. Luna: Give me the actual language. What does Priya say to her manager? Lucas: She says something like: 'I realize I'm still seen as the person who runs social media, but over the past year my work has shifted significantly into product launches and cross-functional strategy. I want to make sure you and others see that, because I'm interested in the PM role on the platform team.' She's not asking for permission. She's giving them an updated label for her. Luna: And what does the manager say? Usually they're surprised, right? Lucas: Often yes. But the key is that Priya has now planted a flag. The manager's mental model is disrupted. They might say, 'Oh, I didn't realize you were doing that much product work.' And then Priya can offer to share a one-page summary of the product initiatives she's led. That document becomes the evidence. Luna: So she's essentially giving them a new narrative to repeat. Lucas: Exactly. And she needs to do that with all three narrative nodes. But here's the tricky part — the order matters. You want to start with the person who's most likely to be an advocate, not the person who's most skeptical. For Priya, that was the senior engineer. They'd worked closely together, and the engineer already respected her product instincts. Luna: So she talks to the engineer first, gets that person on board, and then uses that relationship as social proof when she talks to the VP of marketing. Lucas: Right. And the VP conversation is slightly different. With a senior leader, you want to frame it as a strategic update, not a personal request. Priya might say: 'I wanted to give you a snapshot of the product work I've been leading, because I think it aligns with where the company is headed.' That positions her as thinking about the business, not just her career. Luna: But what if the VP just doesn't see her that way? What if the narrative is too sticky? Lucas: That's a real risk. And it's why you need more than one conversation. Research on cognitive updating — there's a 2020 paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology — shows that people need at least four to six pieces of counter-evidence to revise a strongly held impression. That means Priya needs to consistently demonstrate her product thinking over weeks, not just in one meeting. Luna: That's a lot of work. I mean, she's still doing her marketing job while trying to prove she's something else. Lucas: It is. And honestly, that's part of why internal transfers fail. People underestimate the effort required to change perception. They think updating their profile in the HR system is enough. But the system doesn't control the narrative — people do. Luna: So what does Priya do in those weeks? Is she just talking about it all the time? Lucas: No, that would backfire. You can't just talk. You have to create visible artifacts. She should volunteer to present the product launch retrospective to the broader product team. She should write a post on the company's internal knowledge base about a product insight she uncovered. She should ask to join the product team's sprint reviews as a listener. Luna: And each of those is a data point for the people who still see her as the social media person. Lucas: Exactly. And after three or four of those, she can have the second conversation with her manager — a follow-up where she says, 'I've been doing more product work, and I've gotten positive feedback from the engineering team. I'd like to formally apply for the PM role.' Now the manager has a mental model that's been updated with evidence. Luna: Does she need to update her internal resume too? Lucas: Yes, but it's almost secondary. The resume is a summary of what you've done. The perception change is what makes the resume credible. If the hiring manager already thinks of you as a marketer, they'll read your product experience as marketing spin. If they already see you as a product person, they'll read it as confirmation. Luna: So the rebrand is really about controlling the lens through which your work is interpreted. Lucas: Exactly. And here's a number that stuck with me: a 2024 study from the Corporate Executive Board found that internal candidates who intentionally managed their reputation before applying were 2.3 times more likely to get the role than those who just applied. That's not a small edge. Luna: Two point three times. That's worth the effort. Lucas: It is. But there's a second layer to this that a lot of people miss. The rebrand doesn't stop when you get the transfer. In fact, the first ninety days in the new role are when your old reputation can resurface. Luna: Because people in the new team might have heard the old narrative. Lucas: Right. If Priya moves into the product team, the engineers she hasn't worked with before might think, 'Oh, the marketing person is now a PM.' So she needs to proactively reset expectations in her new team. She can do that by being explicit about her transition in her first team meeting: 'I come from marketing, but I've been working on product launches for the past year, and I'm here to learn the rest.' It's honest and it gives people a new frame. Luna: You're basically managing the narrative on two fronts: the old team and the new team. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what internal rebranding really is — it's narrative management. You're not faking anything. You're just making sure people see the version of you that actually exists. Luna: I want to go back to something you said earlier about the four to six pieces of counter-evidence. That feels like a lot. How does someone with a full-time job find the time to create that many artifacts? Lucas: You don't create them from scratch. You repackage work you're already doing. Priya's product launch retrospective — she had to write that anyway for her own team. She just needed to present it to a wider audience. The internal knowledge base post — she was already synthesizing product insights for her own notes. She just needed to share them. Luna: So it's more about visibility than extra work. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a mindset shift for a lot of people. They think, 'I'll just do good work and people will notice.' But the research shows that's not true. People notice what's visible. And if you're doing product work but only your marketing team sees it, the product team won't know. Luna: That reminds me of something I read from the organizational psychologist Tiziana Casciaro — she studies how people get heard at work. She found that the biggest barrier to internal mobility isn't skill gaps, it's visibility gaps. Lucas: That's exactly it. And a visibility gap is fixable. It just requires intentionality. Luna: So let me ask the obvious question — what if you try all this and the narrative still doesn't shift? What if you have those four conversations, create the artifacts, and people still see you as your old role? Lucas: Then that's a signal about the company culture, not about you. Some organizations have very rigid mental models of people. If you've been there five years as an accountant, no amount of data will convince them you can be a product manager. In that case, the honest answer is that an internal transfer might not be the right path — and that's okay. But you want to know that before you invest six months of effort. Luna: So the rebrand attempt is also a diagnostic. If it works, great. If it doesn't, you have information about whether you need to leave the company to make the change. Lucas: Right. And that's a better outcome than assuming you can't change and never trying. I've seen too many talented people stay stuck in roles they've outgrown because they assumed the internal reputation was fixed. Luna: One quick thing before we wrap — I think it's worth mentioning that this is exactly the kind of practical career advice that takes time to research and produce. And we're able to keep this show ad-free because a small number of listeners support us directly. Lucas: Yeah, that's right. If you've gotten something useful out of episodes like this one — maybe it's helped you think through a career move or decision — you can chip in at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure at all, but that support is what keeps us going. Luna: And we mean it — no pressure. Just a sincere thank you to everyone who already does. Lucas: Okay, back to the rebrand. I want to leave you with one concrete takeaway. Before you apply for any internal role, ask yourself: 'If I asked five colleagues to describe what I do, would any of them mention the work I want to be doing next?' If the answer is no, you have a rebranding problem, not a skills problem. Luna: And that's a problem you can fix starting tomorrow. One conversation at a time. Lucas: Exactly. So start with that first narrative node. Plant the flag. And then build the evidence. It's not quick, but it works. Luna: Thanks for listening — we'll see you next time for episode twenty.