Personality traits and career success: Understanding workplace dynamics

How do personality traits affect career outcomes? We study the role of personality in career advancement using detailed personnel records from a business solutions firm. Employees with higher levels of extraversion are significantly more likely to be promoted, while those with higher neuroticism scores face lower promotion probabilities. Gender differences in extraversion partly explain the observed gender gap in promotions. Role and task assignments largely mediate the link between personality and promotion—employees who receive “stretch assignments” are promoted faster. Our evidence points to both productivity-related and non-productivity-related factors underlying this relationship. First, interpersonal skills are the key determinant of role and task assignment, and extraverts possess superior skills from the outset, enabling them to continue excelling after promotion. Second, extraverts have an advantage in building relationships with supervisors, which may lead to better developmental assignments based on trust and favoritism, yet supervisors with more extraverted subordinates do not perform better. Our findings illustrate how personality-driven social dynamics influence firms’ internal labor markets, offering insights into how assignment and promotion policies affect leadership pipelines and organizational equity.