Workplace learning practice opportunities provide a learning context for career specialists that may significantly determine their competence level and rate of professional growth in their career paths. This paper aims to explore how attending different workplace learning practice choices could have advanced professional career paths of career specialists. The data of the study was collected in Estonia with the survey distributed to the career specialists (N = 173) with different professional backgrounds and career lengths. The survey estimated the professional competence levels, the career length, the relative progress in the career path, and the workplace learning practises the career specialists had taken. The relations between competency profile and attending different workplace learning practice opportunities, and between rapid development or slow development (possibly being on the professional plateau) and workplace learning practices were analysed using the latent profile analysis and Kruskall-Wallis H-tests. Latent profile analysis with competences detected four different competency profile stages: Beginner, Experienced, Expert and Developer. The findings indicated that rapid professional development to the more advanced competency profile stages was positively associated with frequent attendance of varied workplace learning practice opportunities. In contrast, in the state of relatively slow development (being on the possible career plateau), the specialists had attended significantly less workplace learning practice than expected. We address the concern that this lack of experience-based social learning in their training might seriously hinder the work of career specialists who need to provide career guidance to other people. © The Author(s) 2025.
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