Career success, which is often defined in terms of objective and subjective career success, is considered to be important, not only from a society’s and an economic point of view, but also as a component of a successful individual lifestyle (Abele, 2002). With regard to possible predictors of career success, the significance of individual and organizational characteristics has been discussed in the international literature. A meta-analysis conducted by Ng, Eby, Sorensen, and Feldman (2005) suggested that there are organizational characteristics, human capital variables, sociodemographics, and stable individual difference variables that may predict objective and subjective career success. The present study emphasizes the last component by aiming to investigate whether individual difference variables in terms of the Big Five personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness; McCrae & Costa, 1996), internal locus of control (internal LOC, Rotter, 1966), and occupational self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) could predict the objective and subjective career success of preschool teachers. Previous research covering various occupations has shown that the Big Five, internal LOC, and occupational self-efficacy are related to career success (e.g., Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2007). However, there is a lack of research on preschool teachers. The absence of perspectives of career success in preschool teachers is considered to be a potential barrier to the ability to provide a high-quality education to children; that is, difficult working conditions (e.g., high workload, but also characteristics of the teachers) may prevent pedagogues from providing a high-quality education to preschool children (Barnett, 2004). Difficult working conditions may also lead to a decrease in job satisfaction, which has been shown to be related to job performance (Judge, Thoresen, Bono, & Patton, 2001). Research has also suggested that a lack of career success in terms of experience of a large amount of on-the-job stress may lead to job burnout (Alarcon, Eschleman, & Bowling, 2009). Against this background, the investigation of predictors of the career success of preschool teachers is becoming increasingly important, particularly with regard to the Big Five, internal LOC, and occupational self-efficacy, for which the research gap is considerably large. The present study aims to address this lack of research by examining the extent to which the Big Five, LOC, and occupational self-efficacy are predictive of the objective and subjective career success of preschool teachers in Germany. On the basis of previous theoretical and empirical work we derived hypotheses that each point to effects that should hold even when several other predictors (organizational characteristics, human capital variables, sociodemographics) have been taken into account. We hypothesized the following:

• Conscientiousness will positively predict objective (H1a) and subjective career success (H1b).
• Extraversion will positively predict objective (H2a) and subjective career success (H2b).
• Neuroticism will negatively predict objective (H3a) and subjective career success (H3b).
• Internal LOC will positively predict objective (H4a) and subjective career success (H4b).
• Occupational self-efficacy will positively predict objective (H5a) and subjective career success (H5b).

Regarding agreeableness and openness, previous findings have not provided consistent empirical evidence for their relations to career success. Therefore, the investigation of these relations was only exploratory.

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