A competency is a mix of knowledge, skill and attitude that you bring as a potential candidate. This is an effort to bring out your work habits, attitude towards the work you do. A resume building exercise with a focus on core competencies seeks to highlight to the recruiter that you expect to be in a job at a workplace where your skills will be honed.
Identify your core competencies
Think about the work you have done for resume building, whether you are a fresh graduate with some experience on project work or an experienced corporate player. Are you the one who front ends projects or the person who works out possible process improvements? Do you like checking to be sure of perfection or do you prefer to be associated with the creative side of work? Be careful not to let your emotions about the project experience cloud your view. It is possible you would have liked top be associated with the creative side of the work but were forced to do something you did not like. Focus on the skills you have exercised and seen that you are actually good at. Your resume building exercise seeks to make your case for being considered for a job that exercises your preferred skill set.
Listing down your core competencies
Make a worksheet with two columns, one column being skill and the other being attitude. Let us say the skill you had to utilise in your job was database management, a task you did not relish. Though you now have the skills for it, your attitude is that you do not want to find yourself working in the area again. Now, consider the skill data analysis. Is this a part of the job that you enjoyed? In that case, write this down as a skill and indicate your positive attitude towards it. Resume building in this manner helps you to identify the skills that you have enjoyed learning. It clears your mind about your career choices while clarifying what you offer to the recruiter.
List your accomplishments
Now that you have a listing of the core competencies that you want to exercise in your job, let your resume building focus on the concrete accomplishments you have had in the use of the skill. If the is creation and delivery of presentations, for a fresh graduate, this would mean highlighting how a certain aspect of a project received recognition. For an experienced person, it highlights how the presentation wrought desired changes or succeeded in directing attention to an important issue. This allows the recruiter to know your achievements and the specific skills that were utilised for success.
Suit competencies to job requirements
The job description provides a broad list of expectations of the applicant. List out specific terms, while resume building, used in the description and highlight your competencies and accomplishments in line with them. If the job description does not provide much detail, consider a generic job description and mould your skill sets to suit it.