Going to work unshaven, wearing jeans and sneakers, is pretty much ideal, as far as we're concerned. Alas, dress tends to reflect character, and this look pretty much signals loud and clear, "I don't give a s**t."

"The U.K.'s #1 Personal Branding Authority" Lesley Everett would like to help in this department. Her book "Drop Dead Brilliant" is basically a style guide for how to present yourself at work. The main message is that if you are aware of how you are presenting yourself, you can use your appearance to project a stylish confidence that will get you a promotion over some other guy who buys his suits at K-Mart.

A lot of the stuff that Everett suggests is fairly intuitive. "Your messages of personal values, standards and abilities -- what you stand for -- will be strongly projected through your personal image and how you present yourself," she starts one chapter. "Just as companies spend millions of dollars on packaging and marketing to attract us to a product and make us want to buy, you must invest effort in your own personal presentation to 'sell' yourself."

Those sorts of sentiments, combined with a surprising amount of space devoted to stuff like the intricacies of cufflinks, posture, nostril grooming, getting rid of a unibrow, overcoming bad breath and the importance of a firm handshake, left us feeling like she was trying to create a corporate robot army. But, to be sure, there were some gems of guidance worth relaying. Click here to check them out.

Even if your office is "casual," that isn't an invitation to look unkempt. Clearly you should never wear anything on a "dress-down" day that would make you feel embarrassed if you have a surprise meeting with a client or the boss. If you work with older people, they will likely frown upon the ragged death-metal T-shirt you've had since college. Put on a button-down shirt and a hole-free pair of pants. That's just the way it's done. A sports jacket is not such a bad idea, either.

Smile, even if you don't feel like it. A lot of us hate smiling, or feeling like we're being fake, but that's often what a business environment demands. "A smile dominates your face and gives an indication to the other person of how you are feeling, and everybody likes to deal with happy, confident people," writes Everett. Of course, you don't want to go overboard and look like your in some kind of cult.

Speak loudly and clearly. Don Draper doesn't whisper, and his voice doesn't trip up and down the scale or betray that he's tense. His tone is even and forceful, like he knows he's right. In speeches and presentations, Everett notes that, "Breathing more deeply will help you to have more strength in the voice," and that part of holding an audience's attention involves varying pace, modulation and volume. Then again, if you have a tendency to yell, you might want to take it down a notch.

Do you have any suggestions on dress or personal presentation that have worked for you? Let us know in the comments section, slick.