Personal branding can take you far, and it’s not about being ’slick’ or kissing ass in your organization. Instead it’s a way to leverage yourself, make sure you get credit for what you deserve and finally to improve yourself and manage other people’s perceptions.

Leadership consultant Vicky Gordon recently posted an interesting take on the topic on her blog at Harvard Business Review. Basically she divides the ‘invisible resume’ into these five points:

-Find out what’s on your invisible resume

-Ask your manager for substantive feedback beyond perfunctory annual performance reviews

-Begin to rewrite the story

-Establish channels for ongoing feedback

-Periodic self-assessment

As you might have noticed reading the bullet points, the invisible resume is about perception - what people think about you and your actions. You might not have thought about this before, but other people’s perceptions are crucial for your success as you need support to make it to the top. If people don’t like you, don’t think you’re doing a great job, or simply don’t know what you’re doing, you might be losing an important piece in managing and leveraging your appearance.

This is why it’s important to know what’s on the invisible resume. Conduct a 360 degree feedback with peers and other colleagues. Figure out what they think about you and ask for suggestions for improvement. Don’t be offended if they write something you might not like - remember you asked them for it! Try to be objective and use the information to improve. From this point you can start to plan for improvement. Think about things that you might see repeatedly in the feedback and think about what you can do to improve. If necessary, make a plan for how to act, how to schedule your time, according to the suggested improvements.

This way you will start to re-write the story and use on-going feedback to keep improving, stay informed about other people’s perceptions, and this way you are on your way to a better personal brand and a improved ‘invisible resume’.

Read Vicky Gordon’s full blog post here