Ten years of career success in relation to individual and situational variables from the employee development literature

• Employer support for development ten years ago and subsequent support both contribute to success.
• Proactive personality has unique effects on success beyond Big 5 personality, goal orientation, controls.
• Goal orientation interaction/profile effects suggest that main effects are inadequate to explain success.
• Includes an extensive set of individual and situational variables over ten years in a diverse sample.

Individual, situational, and socio-demographic variables from the employee development literature were combined with theory and research on career success in a ten-year study of 289 workers from across many jobs and industries in the workforce. Support for employee development by one's employer ten years prior and a trend of increasing/accumulating support contributed to career success, providing the first long-term confirmation of the value to careers from support for development by employers. Proactive personality had unique effects on success not accounted for by a broad array of other variables, strengthening conclusions from prior research about the predictive value of proactive personality which were based on data not controlling for these variables. Finally, achievement goal orientation influenced success in a unique way via “profile effects:” Goal orientation dimensions interacted to predict success, suggesting simple linear effects (e.g. being more learning-oriented) may be inadequate in explaining career success. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.