The role of career competencies and proactive personality in early-career employee career adaptability Ahmed Khamis AlKhemeiri and Khalizani Khalid College of Business, Abu Dhabi University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Norwahida Musa Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Kedah, Malaysia Abstract Purpose – Employees with high career competencies are more successful in career development. However, it is unclear whether proactivity matters for early-career employees. Thus, this study aims to investigate the influence of career competencies and proactive personality on career adaptability and the moderating role of proactive personality in this relationship. Design/methodology/approach – This study adopts a quantitative methodology, collecting data through online questionnaires from respondents (n = 400) who had less than five years of work experience in the UAE. A measurement model and hypotheses testing were conducted using AMOS software. Multigroup structural equation modelling was used to test the moderation model. Findings – The results show a direct relationship between career competencies and career adaptability. However, a proactive personality is insignificantly related to career adaptability. Further, early-career employees with low proactive personality benefit from high career competencies. Originality/value – This study offers contributions to the emerging understanding of career construction by emphasising the important role of career competencies for early-career employees who manifest a low proactive personality. Keywords Career adaptability, Career competencies, Proactive personality, Early-career, Employees, United Arab Emirates Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction Fast-changing work climates and less stable career patterns are rapidly becoming normal in the contemporary job world. Scholars note that as job availability is further restricted, early- career employees must speedily develop and sustain their employment status (Otoo, 2019). Therefore, self-directed, individualised career paths have gained importance. Career resources (career adaptability and career competencies) and personal agency (proactive personality) are becoming more relevant for successful career development (Savickas, 2013). Most recent studies in the field of career adaptability focus on predictors of career adaptability (Pan et al., 2018; Safavi and Bouzari, 2019). However, few examine career resources such as knowledge, skills (de Guzman and Choi, 2013) and personality traits Declaration of interest: None. Employee career adaptability Received 7 May 2020 Revised 18 July 2020 Accepted 24 July 2020 European Journal of Training and Development © Emerald Publishing Limited 2046-9012 DOI 10.1108/EJTD-05-2020-0081 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/2046-9012.htm