This article analyzes the political careers of party leaders in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland for the postwar period (1945-2020). Incorporating previous research on political careers in general and careers-as-sequences literature in particular, it provides a fine-grained overview of party leaders' political careers that takes executive, legislative and party positions into account. Aside from displaying these careers descriptively, I also look to what extent party leaders benefit from career capital. The latter concept is a one-dimensional aggregation of pre-party leaders' political careers and indicates to what extent a politician spent more time in positions with more seniority across dimensions. Theoretically, I hypothesise that career capital serves as an indication for political networks, experience and reputation, and therefore increases the probability of party leaders' political survival. In addition, I also examine the potential impact of youth wing positions, more specifically, as they carry the implication of early-mover advantages. The empirical section consists of survival models that are used to analyze these propositions. The results are in line with the expectations. Career capital aides party leaders' survival in office, but it only does so when one takes party characteristics, electoral performance and country into account. Youth wing positions, however, seem to have strong benefits that go beyond party and country, and party leaders who have had experience in their party's youth wing last significantly longer in office.