Looking at a next role through a competency profile is tempting: six words, three levels, and a feeling that the right job must be in there somewhere. It can help, if you use the profile for the right question. Not "which jobs will take me?" but "which kinds of daily work will come naturally, which will ask me to stretch, and how can I find out cheaply?"
A profile describes habits, not job fit
The Competency Test from JobCannon records how often you say you act in six ways: communication, problem solving, leadership, planning, adaptability and teamwork. It is not an ability test, it has no norm group, it is not validated, and it does not predict job success. So it cannot say which roles you would succeed in, and no role "requires" a particular result.
Even employers' own competency lists vary. The research on how organisations build competency models, including Shippmann and colleagues and the later best-practice paper by Campion and colleagues, describes a wide range in how carefully they are made. A job ad that asks for "strong communication" is pointing in a direction. It is not setting a cutoff.
What different kinds of work lean on
Every role uses all six in some measure. The useful question is where the weight tends to sit in an ordinary week. These are tendencies, not requirements, and the same title can look quite different at two employers.
- Coordinating work (project or operations coordination, scheduling, getting a release out): leans on planning and communication, because the job is dates, handoffs and who knows what.
- Support and client-facing roles: lean on adaptability and teamwork, because each call or ticket differs and the answer often sits with a colleague. Communication matters here too.
- Running a team day to day: leans on leadership and communication, through deciding, delegating and giving feedback.
- Analysis, troubleshooting and technical fixing: lean on problem solving and planning, through narrowing down causes and ordering the work.
- Work with shifting priorities (a small company, a new team, a project that keeps changing): leans on adaptability, and on communication to keep others informed.
- Work done in a close group (a small delivery team, a shop floor): leans on teamwork and communication.
If two of these sound like the way you already like to work, treat them as hypotheses worth testing, not conclusions.
Why a low score is not a reason to rule a role out
An Early stage result means you currently say you act that way less often. It is not a ceiling. Habits are the changeable part of a profile, because they are behaviors, and a 30-day plan for one competency shows what practising one can look like.
Context also changes behavior. Someone who rarely speaks up in a large meeting may plan carefully and write clearly. Someone rated Developing in leadership may lead well in a small group they trust. A role is a context, and you have only rated yourself in the contexts you have had so far.
A low level in a competency a role leans on is a useful question, not a no. How would I build this habit? Who nearby does it well? Would I enjoy the daily work? The reverse holds too: a Strong result is not a promise that you will like work that leans on it. Liking is a separate question, and interest-based tests such as Career Match look at it from the other side.
Test a role hypothesis cheaply
Before changing jobs, run small experiments. None needs permission from anyone and none commits you to anything.
- Shadow someone. Ask one person who does the job for a half day, a call or a coffee. Ask them to walk you through yesterday: what they did, which part was tiring, which part they would hand off if they could.
- Read ten job ads and tally the verbs. Pick one job title and collect ten ads from different employers. Underline every verb ("coordinate", "resolve", "present", "prioritise", "support"). Tally them on a sheet under the six competencies. Ignore the adjectives such as "dynamic" and "passionate"; look at what people are asked to do. The competencies that collect the most ticks are where that role tends to lean, according to the people hiring.
- Do one small piece of the work. Volunteer in your current job for a task that looks like the new role, and notice whether the daily doing of it gives you energy or drains it.
Then compare your notes with your profile. If the role leans on something you rated Developing and you came away curious rather than dreading it, you have learned something a level word could not tell you. If the experiments point you toward a role, showing competencies on a resume and in reviews covers how to write your evidence up.
Skills are the other half
A competency profile describes how you work. Whether you can do the work is a separate question, and it is the one the Skills Audit addresses: it inventories what you can do across technical skills, tools and domain knowledge. Put the three things side by side: your competency profile, your skills inventory and the verb tally from the ads. Where they overlap you have a shortlist. Where they do not, you have a gap to plan around.
If you also want to look at which kinds of work appeal to you in the first place, Career Match is an interest test: it asks what kind of work fits you rather than how you behave at it. Treat it as one more input. For the difference between a competency, a skill and an ability, see competency vs skill vs ability, and for what each of the six means in daily work, the six core work competencies explained.