# Example of Key Competencies: What Counts and How to Show It Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/example-of-key-competencies/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/example-of-key-competencies.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving building self-awareness at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Examples of key competencies for each main type, from teamwork to managing yourself, and how to back each one with a true story from your own experience. ## Key facts - Title: Example of Key Competencies: What Counts and How to Show It - Category: Skills Standards and Frameworks - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Communication, Teamwork - Primary keyword: example of key competencies - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/example-of-key-competencies/ ## What this page covers - Examples of key competencies for each main type, from teamwork to managing yourself, and how to back each one with a true story from your own experience. - Practical guidance for example of key competencies - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation Key competencies are the capabilities that carry from one job to the next: communicating clearly, working in a team, managing your own work, and using information and technology to get things done. A good example of key competencies pairs each one with a specific moment you showed it: not "strong communicator," but the group meeting you ran. That second half is where it gets hard. Naming a competency takes a second, while finding proof in a few years of study, part-time shifts and group projects can feel like digging for evidence that isn't there. Usually it is there, because these are behaviors you have already practiced in small ways and can keep building, not traits you were born with or without. What helps is knowing which kind of competency you are looking at, since each kind leaves a different trail. ## What counts as a key competency The OECD, whose DeSeCo project laid much of the groundwork for the idea, describes a competency as more than knowledge and skills: it is the ability to meet complex demands by drawing on skills and attitudes in a particular context. Those last three words carry the weight. A competency only shows up when you use it somewhere real, which is why it is judged by what you did rather than by what you call it. An example of a key competency is therefore always a small story with a situation in it. The vocabulary shifts with the setting. A job ad may say core competencies, a school curriculum may say transversal competencies, a careers guide may talk about generic or 21st-century competencies. They all point at the same family: capabilities that keep their value when you change roles, employers or sectors. No version of the label refers to a different, hidden set you are supposed to know about. The lists themselves differ mainly by purpose. The European Union's framework of key competences for lifelong learning, revised in 2018, names eight that run from literacy and digital competence to entrepreneurship and cultural awareness, because it is built for education across a whole life rather than for one hiring decision. For someone heading into work, the closer reference is the set of eight [career readiness competencies](/knowledge/skills-standards/nace-competencies/) that the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) defined together with employers: career and self-development, communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalism, teamwork and technology. Each comes with sample behaviors, so technology, for instance, is spelled out as using technologies ethically to work more efficiently, complete tasks and reach goals. Even an employer-built list, in other words, treats a competency as something you do. And when NACE asked employers in 2016 which competencies mattered most in new graduates, four rose to the top: critical thinking and problem solving, professionalism and work ethic, teamwork, and communication. ## Examples of key competencies, by type However long a competency list gets, most of it sorts into the three broad groups the OECD uses to organize the field, which in plain terms are interacting with others, managing yourself, and using tools and information. A fourth kind, the job-specific technical competency, sits outside the three. It is worth keeping separate, because it answers a different question. ### Interacting with others This group covers relating well to people, cooperating in a team, and managing or resolving conflict. In employer lists it appears as communication, teamwork and leadership. Its distinguishing feature is that it only exists between people, so the evidence is always an exchange with someone else: the teammate you brought back into a stalled project, the customer complaint you settled without passing it up the line, the argument over a group presentation that ended in a plan everyone followed. A quick check for any example in this group is whether another person appears in it. "I am a good communicator" has nobody else in the sentence. "I sent a short summary after every group meeting so nobody worked from an old version of the plan" does. ### Managing yourself This is the self-directed group: acting with the bigger picture in mind, setting and following your own plans, and standing up for your interests, limits and needs. In employer lists it surfaces as career and self-development and as professionalism. What sets it apart is that nobody else made it happen, so the evidence is what you did without being told. Think of the study schedule you built and kept through an exam period while still working shifts, the course you signed up for because the same gap kept tripping you up, or the moment you told a supervisor you could not take on a fourth task by Friday and offered a realistic date instead. Reliability belongs here as well. Delivering what you said, when you said you would, is self-management in its plainest form, and it rarely feels like an achievement, which is exactly why it so often goes missing from applications. ### Using tools and information The third group is about putting a tool or a body of knowledge to work: language and texts, information and data, technology. Education frameworks list it as literacy and digital competence, and employer lists call it critical thinking and technology. Its distinguishing feature is purpose, since a tool only counts as competence when it gets something done. So a good example names the outcome alongside the tool. Not "proficient in Excel," but the spreadsheet that let your team see at a glance which orders were running late, or the report you cut down to one page so a manager could decide from it. ### Job-specific technical competencies Bookkeeping, coding and operating a particular machine are real competencies, but they belong to a specific role and are usually taught by schools or employers. They do not carry across roles the way the first three groups do. That is why a key competencies section filled only with software and tools misses what the phrase usually asks for, just as one filled only with adjectives misses the evidence. Keep technical skills in their own section, and let the key competencies show how you work. ## How to turn a competency into an example Competencies are tested, not taken on trust. In a [competency-based interview](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/job-skills-for-interview/) the question usually opens with "tell me about a time when," and a good answer follows a simple shape: the Situation, the Task you faced, the Action you took and the Result. A concrete past situation is far easier to judge than a description of yourself, so the interviewer is listening for your action and its result, not for adjectives. The same shape works on paper, compressed. One sentence in an application can carry all four parts: "When two members of our project group dropped out three weeks before submission, I re-split the work and the report went in on time." That line evidences teamwork and self-management at once without a single adjective. With limited experience, the stories come from group projects, part-time jobs, volunteering, sports teams, a student society you helped run. None of them needs to be dramatic. What matters is that the story is true, that you are the one acting in it, and that it ends with a result you can state plainly, even a mixed one. ## Choosing which key competencies to put forward A job ad rarely asks for just one or two competencies. It usually lists many more, spread across [duties and requirements](/knowledge/skills-standards/required-competencies/), and the length alone can make a role look out of reach. If you have ever finished reading one feeling short on every line, here is how one of the young people we interviewed about starting work put that feeling: > Job ads are written so convoluted and with so many expectations that you look at them and think: nobody can do this. Whether it's a cashier or a chief physician. The way through is to stop reading the list as a checklist to match line by line. Look for the handful of competencies the ad keeps returning to, sort them into the three groups above, and put forward the few where your evidence runs deepest. The four that NACE's employers ranked highest are a sensible place to make sure you have at least one story ready each. Choosing honestly is easier with an outside reading of your own pattern, and the free Job Skills Test can help you [see which skills run strongest](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) before you decide what to lead with. Whatever comes out thin is a skill you can build, not a verdict on you. On a CV, a key competencies section needs only a handful of entries, each phrased as a capability and backed somewhere nearby, in your experience section or [cover letter](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/soft-skills-for-cover-letter/), by the story that proves it. A label on its own reads as a claim. A label with a story behind it reads as an example. ## What makes your competencies easier to prove Look back across the types and the hard part is rarely the competency itself. It is knowing which of yours are real, saying them in a way that lands, and having worked closely enough with other people to have something worth telling. **Building Self-Awareness** decides which competencies you can claim with a straight face. It starts with telling your natural strengths apart from things you are merely competent at, by looking at how you work, how a task makes you feel and what results it produces. The other half is feedback. A tutor, a shift manager or a teammate who has watched you work can confirm what you think you are good at, or point to a strength you had not noticed, and that turns a borrowed list into a short one you can defend. **Communication** is easy to claim and easy to leave unproven, so it helps to know what it looks like as behavior: being clear and direct, putting the main point first, listening properly before answering, handling a disagreement without heat, writing an email someone can act on. The same habits decide how every other competency lands. An interview answer that opens with the result and then explains how you got there persuades far more than a paragraph of adjectives. **Teamwork** is often the competency you can evidence most easily from limited experience, because group projects, part-time jobs, sports and volunteering all put you alongside other people. The stronger stories go past "team player": taking on whatever work the group needed, doing what you committed to, arguing a plan on its merits and then backing the decision the group made, or raising it directly when a teammate kept missing their part. Those are behaviors an interviewer can probe, which is what makes them believable. Self-awareness is the one of the three that most benefits from an outside measure, and that is what the **free Job Skills Test** provides: a quick reading across **all twelve work skills** in the set, these three included, that helps you [pinpoint what to build next](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/). Because every one of them can be practiced, a low score simply tells you which story to go and create in your next project or shift. ## The examples you already have Some of this may already sound like an ordinary term for you. If you have ever been the person who pulled a group's messy shared document into shape the night before it was due, or kept a line of customers calm when the register went down, you are holding the raw material of an example, whether or not you have ever written it down. The competencies you cannot evidence yet are not missing pieces of who you are. They are behaviors you have not had much reason to practice, and you can build them one situation at a time, in your own style. Later roles lean on these capabilities harder, not less, which makes now, while each gap is a matter of a few practiced situations, a good time to start closing them. What you need first is a clear picture of where you begin. ## Start from an honest inventory Your next step is to see where you stand before you write the next application. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: it takes 7 minutes, scores you across all twelve, and shows which ones would add the most to your key competencies section and the stories you bring to an interview. ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Examples of key competencies for each main type, from teamwork to managing yourself, and how to back each one with a true story from your own experience. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Communication, Teamwork. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/example-of-key-competencies/ Preferred summary: "Examples of key competencies for each main type, from teamwork to managing yourself, and how to back each one with a true story from your own experience." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.