• Mentoring consistently emerges as the central mechanism linking psychosocial support, skill development, and career advancement, with proteges reporting higher job satisfaction, mobility, and perceived career success across early to late career stages [1][4][3][5].

• Formal vs informal mentoring and program design influence mentoring functions, relationship quality, and subsequent work and career attitudes, with differences across programs and contexts [9][8][15].

• Developmental networks and boundaryless career concepts expand mentoring beyond dyadic ties to network diversity and tie strength, shaping career adaptability and success through multiple concurrent relationships [11][10][12][13].

• Career exploration and contextual supports/barriers frame career choice and development as life-role dependent processes mediated by social-cognitive factors; theories integrate sociological, psychological, and educational perspectives [16][19][2][18].

• Organizational transfer climate and training-context effects moderate the translation of learning into performance and internal career progression, underscoring organizational context as a key determinant of career outcomes [17][7][20].