It takes anywhere from three to 15 months to find the right job -- yet just days or weeks to lose it. Here are 10 traits that are career poison:

With the economy as it is most people at work are under a lot of stress. There is the threat of retrenchments and the fact that many firms are seeing a slump in sales and income, which only increases the stress levels all around.

What is important to understand, is that stress is a completely natural reaction and part of the human experience. It doesn’t necessarily have to have a negative effect on us. By choosing how to react to stress, we can – to a degree – control how it influences us. Interestingly, we can even wield it to our advantage, if we go about the situation mindfully.